tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-83574612097299918552024-03-12T21:49:10.507-07:00For ReelzMovie and TV reviewsAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06788052045631995191noreply@blogger.comBlogger650125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8357461209729991855.post-784863860237972222017-01-04T14:19:00.001-08:002017-01-04T14:19:56.917-08:00"Rogue One: A Star Wars Story" (2016)Starring Felicity Jones, Diego Luna and Ben Mendelsohn<br />
Written by Chris Weitz and Tony Gilroy<br />
Directed by Gareth Edwards<br />
Rated PG-13 — Sci-fi violence, frightening images<br />
Running Time: 133 Minutes<br />
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sC9abcLLQpI">Trailer</a><br />
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Nineteen years after the fall of the old Republic, the evil Galactic Empire is building its ultimate weapon: the Death Star, a space station with the power to destroy entire planets. Upon learning of the existence of this weapon, rebel spy Cassian Andor (Diego Luna) and his droid K-2SO (Alan Tudyk) are tasked with finding Jyn Erso (Felicity Jones) the daughter of the man who designed the Death Star.<br />
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Jyn, they hope, can get them into a meeting with rebel extremist Saw Gerrera (Forest Whitaker) who has captured an imperial defector (Riz Ahmed) with important info about the Death Star. But the more they learn about this weapon, the more dire the situation becomes. Along with a blind Guardian of the Whills named Chirrut Imwe (Donnie Yen) and his mercenary friend Baze (Jiang Wen), the rebels will engage in their most daring mission against the Empire yet, one that will set the course of the rest of the war...<br />
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<a name='more'></a>Finally, a good "Star Wars" prequel. Episodes I, II and III are straight-up garbage. Poorly acted, loaded with shoddy effects and baffling storytelling choices, about the only decent thing about those movies is John Williams' musical scores.<br />
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By comparison, "Rogue One" is narratively rather simple, a back-to-basics affair that also has a surprisingly deft touch with its fan service. It is somehow also both retro and a thoroughly modern take on the "Star Wars" universe, eschewing certain conventions of the franchise to stand itself apart while simultaneously hitching itself to the original film. It does what all prequels should do: Make you eager to immediately watch the original again — not to flush the bad taste from your mouth, but to continue the story you just watched.<br />
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It doesn't do everything right. The first act of the film is rather choppy. The first introduction to the adult Jyn Erso, played by Felicity Jones, has her waking up in a prison cell in a scene that is as short as it is superfluous since we immediately jump to another star system to introduce Diego Luna's Cassian Andor, then jump back again to Jyn being transported to an imperial work camp.<br />
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There's a moment between Jyn and Baze late in the film that feels like it's supposed to be a nice, emotional bit between them that is completely unearned. It's so out of left field that it makes me wonder if there's an entire subplot excised during the film's rather famous post-production shuffling.<br />
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Additionally, the film's use of CGI versions of familiar characters can be troublesome. In particular, while I don't think the computerized version of Peter Cushing's Tarkin (Cushing has been dead for more than 20 years) is as bad as others have said, it is obvious that we're looking at a special effect rather than a live actor. While "Rogue One" is content to recast a minor role like Mon Mothma by using the same actress who played her in "Revenge of the Sith," it might have been better served looking elsewhere for ways to bring Tarkin back.<br />
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But while "Rogue One" stumbles in a few places, it gets so much right that these are ultimately minor quibbles. The film's third act is a huge, rousing action sequence the like fans have been hoping for from "Star Wars" for decades but have been so often denied. With no Jedi or prophecies of mythic scale, "Rogue One" instead delivers fantastic sci-fi warfare that feels brutal without sacrificing entertainment value — it's both the "Battlestar Galactica" of "Star Wars" films and the "Empire Strikes Back" of "Star Wars" fan-service.<br />
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References to later films serve to set up those films rather than how the previous prequels used them for ham-fisted exposition. Little bits of footage repurposed from "A New Hope" put familiar rebel X-wing and Y-wing pilots from that film into "Rogue One" — a tiny bit hidden in the battle has Red 5 bite the dust, opening the door for Luke to take that callsign. Even the Death Star itself is clearly being utilized at a low-power setting so that Tarkin in "A New Hope" can tell Vader that it's time for a "full power" demonstration on Alderaan.<br />
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In any case, "Star Wars" nerds will find a ton to chew on here while those less familiar with the nitty-gritty details won't find themselves adrift in a sea of strangling continuity.<br />
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Director Gareth Edwards and cinematographer Greig Fraser construct a number of fantastic images, and the film as a whole is quite gorgeous to look at. The Death Star is given considerable size and weight befitting its dastardly purpose, and there are several moments as it looms over the horizon of the planet Jedha, blocking out the sun before firing or hanging in space as flame and planetary debris blossom upward, that are striking and cool. I was a bit hard on Edwards for his "Godzilla" film which I thought was visually awesome but was lacking in the plot and character department. "Rogue One" is quite a step up but still isn't quite there, thanks to some of the stuff I mentioned earlier. Still, Edwards remains a director to watch who has a fine grasp of tone and imagery, if not always emotion and storytelling.<br />
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Ultimately, "Rogue One" cements itself not only as the first good "Star Wars" prequel but as one of the best "Star Wars" movies out there. It's big and entertaining and along with "The Force Awakens" sets a high bar for future films in the franchise as we get away from the awful, awful prequel trilogy.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06788052045631995191noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8357461209729991855.post-37737057682711684852016-11-08T23:01:00.000-08:002016-11-08T23:01:00.829-08:00"Jack Reacher: Never Go Back" (2016)Starring Tom Cruise, Cobie Smulders and Danika Yarosh<br />
Written by Richard Wenk, Edward Zwick and Marshal Herskovitz<br />
Directed by Edward Zwick<br />
Rated PG-13: Language, violence<br />
Running Time: 118 Minutes<br />
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aRwrdbcAh2s">Trailer</a><br />
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Jack Reacher (Tom Cruise) has gone back to his drifter lifestyle after helping to take down a corrupt sheriff who led a human trafficking scheme. He develops a friendly phone-relationship with his army contact, Major Susan Turner (Cobie Smulders), and he decides to visit her in Washington, DC. But when he arrives, he discovers that Turner has been arrested and charged with treason.<br />
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Despite her requests that he stay away, Reacher digs into Turner's case and quickly uncovers a conspiracy to frame Turner. But Reacher gets more than he bargained for. The conspirators have dug into his past and found a weakness: A 15-year-old girl named Samantha (Danika Yarosh) who might just be the pressure point they need to get Reacher off their backs.<br />
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Or so they think.<br />
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<a name='more'></a>Oh boy. 2012's "Jack Reacher" was a well-made little thriller. It wasn't spectacularly original nor was it the finest example of the genre, but it was a great place for a franchise to start and my initial opinion on it warmed even more on subsequent viewings. 2016's sequel, "Never Go Back" is everything that movie isn't. While the original film featured a hard-edged sense of cool, anchored by a coiled-snake performance by Cruise, "Never Go Back" is thriller that isn't thrilling and a mystery that's never intriguing.<br />
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Cruise is still a fine choice to play author Lee Child's most enduring creation. I honestly don't care what anyone says about Cruise's height or build compared to the literary version; Cruise is absolutely fine in this role. Or rather, he was in the first film. Here, he seems bored. In the first film, Cruise seemed like he was just waiting to be unleashed, that his quiet was calculated and at any second he could unleash either a stinging rebuke or a vicious right-cross — and you weren't ever sure which.<br />
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But in "Never Go Back," Cruise often just stares straight forward with little sense of menace or intelligence, like he neither understands nor cares what the script requires of him at any given moment. It's one of the actor's more disappointing performances in a career full of intriguingly watchable performances. It's become something of a cliche to talk about Cruise's dedication to his work versus his rather ridiculous and borderline insane real-life persona, but this is the first time in a good while that I've felt he dropped the ball.<br />
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On a technical level, "Never Go Back" is proficient but unremarkable. It has none of the artistry that elevated the first "Reacher" over its B-movie aesthetic, with even the fights and action sequences feeling perfunctory and ultimately basic. Director Edward Zwick displays none of the sense of cool that Chris McQuarrie had on the first film, churning out a thriller that feels more at home on the direct-to-DVD market than a feature film with a $60 million budget. Even Henry Jackman's score is thoroughly anonymous, eschewing Joe Kraemer's intriguing practice of <i>not</i> scoring action sequences to heighten tension, and Jackman's a composer whose work I've enjoyed previously (notably, good portions of his score for "Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit" and "GI Joe: Retaliation" as well as "X-Men: First Class" and "Captain America: Civil War.")<br />
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If there's a bright spot in all this mediocrity, it's Cobie Smulders as Major Turner. Although the script throws her uncomfortably into some scenes where she's forced into a somewhat stereotypical mom role, she handles it all very well. Smulders is at turns fierce, competent and gives a real sense that she not only inhabits the character but wanted to be there — unlike Cruise this time around. Even saddled with some eye-rollingly limp dialogue, she earns every legitimately cool moment she has. Smulders has been a bright spot in her TV sitcom work and her unfortunately limited role in the Marvel universe, and it's nice to see her getting a bigger part here.<br />
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The best part of "Never Go Back" is its opening scene, which is basically just the first minute of the film's trailer.<br />
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Unfortunately for someone like me who greatly enjoyed the first "Jack Reacher" film, this sequel is much more in line with what every fan of Child's book series feared about that first movie — that it would be a limp cash-in with little of the fun and wit that makes the book series so popular and enjoyable. It's a rare misfire for Cruise, and an unfortunate misstep in what could be a hidden gem franchise for action movie fans. If there's a third movie in the series, hopefully whoever makes it can correct course.<br />
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See Also<br />
<a href="http://benforreelz.blogspot.com/2012/12/reacher-2012.html">Jack Reacher (2012)</a>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06788052045631995191noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8357461209729991855.post-617772072519030642016-11-03T09:25:00.001-07:002016-11-03T09:25:32.608-07:00"Doctor Strange" (2016)Starring Benedict Cumberbatch, Chiwetel Ejiofor and Tilda Swinton<br />
Written by Scott Derrickson and C. Robert Cargill<br />
Directed by Scott Derrickson<br />
Rated PG-13 — Superhero violence, language<br />
Running Time: 115 Minutes<br />
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HSzx-zryEgM">Trailer</a><br />
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Prominent neurosurgeon Dr. Stephen Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) is on his way to a fancy speaking engagement when he gets distracted behind the wheel and his car goes off the road. With his hands crushed and suffering debilitating nerve damage, Strange dedicates all his resources to finding new or experimental treatments to regain full use of his hands. With his money running out and his friends abandoning him, he turns in desperation to Nepal to track down a miracle.<br />
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In an old monastery, he meets Mordo (Chiwetel Ejiofor) who introduces him to the Ancient One (Tilda Swinton). The Ancient One is a being of great power who reveals to Strange that there is more to the physical world than he could possibly imagine: the realm of mystical energies and sorcerers. She promises to teach Strange the mystic ways to help him regain the use of his hands, and draft him into a secret war to protect the Earth from Dormammu, the demon ruler of the dark dimension.<br />
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Dormammu's worshippers, led on Earth by Kaecilius (Mads Mikkelsen), steal forbidden rituals from the Ancient One's library, hoping to use them to open a portal to Dormammu's dimension and let it run roughshod over the Earth.<br />
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<a name='more'></a>The mighty Marvel machine rolls on! Having given their more recognizable heroes a go (The Avengers) and proving that even little-known properties can go AAA (Guardians of the Galaxy), Marvel is digging deeper into its catalogue of weirdos like... Doctor Strange.<br />
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At this point, Marvel Studios knows how to make their movies. Each one of these things is meticulously constructed along the studio's proven guidelines. "Doctor Strange" is no different, for better and for worse.<br />
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Let's start with the worse: You've seen this movie before. This is an extremely standard origin story, following every story beat you know by heart now. There are no real surprises here, as Strange goes from powerless to powerful. You'll find all the requisite training sequences, where Strange struggles to understand his newfound abilities and master them, as well as the first battle where he manages to fend off evildoers despite overwhelming odds. When it comes to the plot, everything here is bog-standard.<br />
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But this being a Marvel movie, it's executed extremely well and in a breezy and entertaining manner, to help smooth over the fact that it often feels like they just copied new dialogue into the "Iron Man" script.<br />
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Other problems: You'll notice I didn't actually name or mention Rachel McAdams' character, Dr. Christine Palmer, in my plot description above. That's because she's almost entirely wasted here and serves little purpose in the narrative except to give Strange a target for his anger and resentment during the early phase of the movie, and then for him to apologize to later for being an epic douche. To the filmmakers' credit, McAdams is never a damsel in distress, so there's that going for it. Otherwise, she could probably be pretty easily removed from this movie and no one would notice.<br />
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On the upside, while the story is superbly familiar, this is some of Marvel's wildest, most imaginative and colorful imagery yet. For the first time, a Marvel movie feels like 3D is actually a bonus, with a wonderful sense of depth and dimension. This is, of course, especially apparent during the film's many mystical action sequences in which characters begin to warp reality to use it as a weapon. This is apparent right from the beginning as Swinton's Ancient One attempts to thwart Kaecilius and his followers from stealing powerful spell pages from her library. Buildings and even entire streets are used as weapons, folded in and over themselves to stymy enemy movements or even to entrap or crush them.<br />
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Later, these sequences get more elaborate and intense, as the entirety of Manhattan is used to throw Strange and Mordo for a loop. Characters hurl themselves along walls, construct new paths for themselves out of the kaleidoscope pieces of fire escapes and skyscrapers. Gravity shifts on a whim, allowing characters to run above and beneath each other, or plummet down Manhattan avenues.<br />
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Visually, there's a whole lot to love in "Doctor Strange." It's a film that enjoys playing with gravity, time and reality itself. It's colorful and weird and wacky and highly enjoyable in this regard.<br />
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If you've enjoyed the Marvel Cinematic Universe so far, there's nothing about "Doctor Strange" that will change that for you. There's lots of fun to be had, even if it's a dangerously familiar tale.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06788052045631995191noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8357461209729991855.post-6795304299607590662016-08-06T23:09:00.001-07:002016-08-06T23:09:25.721-07:00"Ghostbusters" (2016)Starring Kristen Wiig, Melissa McCarthy, Leslie Jones and Kate McKinnon<br />
Written by Katie Dippold and Paul Feig<br />
Directed by Paul Feig<br />
Rated PG-13 — Language, frightening images<br />
Running Time: 116 Minutes<br />
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3ugHP-yZXw">Trailer</a><br />
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Dr. Erin Gilbert (Kristen Wiig) is forced to confront a part of her past she'd rather leave behind when the manager of an old New York City mansion that is now a museum approaches her about a ghost encounter. Fearing that knowledge of her past as a paranormal investigator will cause her trouble as she nears a tenure review at Columbia University, she tracks down her old friend Dr. Abby Yates (Melissa McCarthy). Abby works out of a much less prestigious educational institution, eking out a meager paranormal research career with her friend, brilliant and eccentric engineer Dr. Jillian Holztmann (Kate McKinnon).<br />
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The three of them head to the mansion and manage to capture a malicious entity on videotape, which quickly goes viral and all three are soon laughed out of academia and called frauds. But MTA worker Patty Tolan (Leslie Jones) tracks the three down after having her own ghost encounter in the subway, one which leaves behind strange and specific evidence that points to a growing supernatural problem in the city.<br />
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Together with their doofus receptionist Kevin (Chris Hemsworth), these four friends join together to combat the rising tide of ghosts and hopefully prove once and for all that they're not frauds.<br />
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<a name='more'></a>Oh man, where to even start? With an obvious joke: Bustin' makes me feel good. After an absolutely vicious smear campaign by angry online nerds, Paul Feig's "Ghostbusters" is here and people can finally judge it for what it is instead of what they don't want it to be or whatever the hell people were going on about for the last 18 months.<br />
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And yeah, "Ghostbusters" is good. <i>Really</i> good. It has a few weak spots, but to be honest, it's a movie that's just so much pure fun that it earns us letting a couple minor things slide.<br />
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Perhaps knowingly, much of the story hinges on the idea of the world seeing these women as frauds. While his cameo ultimately doesn't amount to much (and, honestly, isn't particularly funny), it's kind of a stroke of genius to cast Bill Murray as a famed debunker of the supernatural since it was Murray who was so often blamed for the lack of a third "Ghostbusters" film with the original cast. The movie doesn't lean too hard on the meta-commentary about these Ghostbusters as pretenders or charlatans, which feels to me a bit like it's pulling its punches. Additionally, the film's villain is a Redditor stereotype, a "weirdo" with violent delusions of grandeur who thinks the world owes him something. The movie perhaps could have been a bit sharper on this respect, but then, I also found myself wishing part way through the movie that it had been rated R and included some more foul language (something that definitely helped Feig's breakout "Bridesmaids.")<br />
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But I digress.<br />
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For its strengths, that lies in three key places: the marvelous cast, the quick-witted absurdity of the script and the most technically proficient direction from Paul Feig that I've seen yet. For Feig, this is a step up from the parts of "Spy" that leaned heavily into straight action. It feels like each movie he makes, while always a comedy, feels more confident and assured than the last, and "Ghostbusters" is easily his slickest.<br />
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For the script, Feig collaborated with Katie Dippold and I'm sure that the cast was allowed to do an incredible amount of improv. (I await gag reels and goofy behind-the-scenes footage sure to appear on the blu-ray release.) Much of the humor comes out of allowing all these personalities to bounce off each other as the gang gets into increasingly weirder and crazier situations. Much of the humor in this film doesn't translate well to trailers, which may have contributed to some of the negative reactions it got (y'know, that and all the nonsensical misogyny and nerdrage). It's just not a script full of trailer-ready lines and gags.<br />
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One of the great strengths of the movie is its cast. Everyone here has wonderful chemistry. All the Ghostbusters are believably nerdy in their own way, and while there's still the overall group makeup of three scientists and a lay-person, the characters aren't one-to-one translations of the originals, allowing each one to be mostly distinct.<br />
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While the laughs do come from all four, I have to repeat all the other reviewers in their praise of Kate McKinnon's performance as Holtzmann. With just a look, she can steal every scene she's in. From her fascinatingly awkward (and dangerous) dances to oddball one-liners to the simple act of eating a Pringle at the worse time possible, she owns it. She gets the biggest cheers in the film's climactic battle sequence, as well, a showcase of action-movie badassery that is entirely satisfying.<br />
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Additionally, Chris Hemsworth is cast in the role of the "dumb blonde" and completely nails it. His job interview scene alone is gold, but every time he's forced to confront phones or coffee, he's gold.<br />
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But "Ghostbusters" 2016 has some weaknesses. While it's definitely Feig's best technical work to date, it also has all of his failings as a filmmaker. I think Feig's biggest problem is that he loves to keep material in a movie that he shouldn't. His scenes tend to run a bit long, and even his individual shots. It doesn't always happen, but there are more than a few scenes that could use some trimming. Whether it's gags that fall flat or too much time between dialogue, this film just needs to be a little bit leaner.<br />
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Probably less avoidable are the occasionally limp special effects. Most of the movie looks fine, and the ghosts themselves are well-rendered. But, and this affects the climax most notably, things occasionally look flat and cheap when it counts the most. The dimensional vortex rescue, for example, is a great emotional moment between two characters that looks like exactly what it is: two comedy actresses suspended by wires in front of a green screen.<br />
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Still, despite these minor quibbles, "Ghostbusters" is a success. Funny and charming, with a couple truly knockout comedic performances, it's a great time at the movies. If you don't hate women or are mature enough to let someone else play in a sandbox you don't own, "Ghostbusters" is recommended summer fun.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06788052045631995191noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8357461209729991855.post-69069940841397793422016-08-06T20:23:00.001-07:002016-08-06T20:23:50.837-07:00"Suicide Squad" (2016)Starring Will Smith, Margot Robbie and Joel Kinnaman<br />
Written and directed by David Ayer<br />
Rated PG-13: Violence, language<br />
Running Time: 123 Minutes<br />
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CmRih_VtVAs">Trailer</a><br />
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Not too long after the devastating events of <a href="http://benforreelz.blogspot.com/2016/08/batman-v-superman-dawn-of-justice.html">"Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice,"</a> the U.S. government is looking to be better prepared for the consequences of meta-human attacks. Intelligence officer Amanda Waller (Viola Davis) has a radical idea: Gather some of the worst of the worst to create a completely deniable tactical team that could respond to cases where regular armed forces just aren't cutting it.<br />
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And so Waller, along with SpecOps Colonel Rick Flag (Joel Kinnaman) puts together "Task Force X," a secret team of villains comprising mercenary Floyd "Deadshot" Lawton (Will Smith), crazed sidekick Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie), weirdo thief Digger "Boomerang" Harkness (Jai Courtney), pyrokinetic Chato "Diablo" Santana (Jay Hernandez), sewer-dwelling gangster Waylon "Killer Croc" Jones (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje), possessed archaeologist Dr. June "Enchantress" Moone (Cara Delevingne), assassin Christopher "Slipknot" Weiss (Adam Beach). With bombs implanted in their necks to keep them in line, this "suicide squad" is let loose in Midway City to extract a high-value target while an ancient evil ravages downtown.<br />
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But as the stakes grow more dire and more is revealed about the nature of their mission, this group of crazed villains must find it within themselves to do something a little less bad than they're used to.<br />
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Unfortunately, they're not the only ones who have come to Midway. Because the Joker (Jared Leto) is here, and he's not about to leave without his girlfriend Harley Quinn.<br />
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<a name='more'></a>Woof. When "Suicide Squad" was first announced, I thought it was a pretty bold move. DC/Warners was trying to build itself a cinematic universe like Marvel's, but instead of playing the same pattern, they made some really interesting decisions — firstly to start out with a massive team-up film with the three biggest names in DC's pantheon (Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman) and immediately following that up with a movie that would focus entirely on <i>villains</i>. When it was announced that David Ayer would be writing and directing the project, I became more intrigued. And then when casting announcements rolled around I was <i>even more</i> intrigued.<br />
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But when "Batman v Superman" came out earlier this year and was savaged by critics and became divisive with fans, someone at Warners panicked. Stories have swirled for months of last-second reshoots, multiple edits by different companies, and more. And now finally "Suicide Squad" is rolling into theaters and it's going to make a ton of money on its opening weekend but... sadly this movie is a total mess.<br />
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Perhaps the worst part of this whole thing is how much potential there is here. From the premise to all the talent behind and in front of the camera, "Suicide Squad" should have been a sure winner. Instead it hits screens with all the punch of a feather pillow. It's a movie full of bizarre, strange ideas that pulls all of its punches and when faced with the option of doing something cool or doing something completely friggin' dull it nearly always goes with the latter option.<br />
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You have a cast of some of the weirdest freaks in the DC universe, and they populate a movie where nearly all of the action sequences are bog-standard gunfights. Aside from the occasional flair of creativity, there's almost not a single moment in "Suicide Squad" that's exciting once the bullets start to fly. The final battle feels a little fresher since the team is suddenly being utilized according to their unique skills, but even then it feels too little too late.<br />
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For example, you have Killer Croc who is a huge amphibious creature but for most of the movie he gets to slam one or two dudes to the ground and grunt a bit. When he finally gets a chance to use a skill that's unique to him, it feels like a total throwaway — and worse, gets hidden behind some shoddy camerawork and editing that makes it hard to tell what's going on.<br />
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Or you've got Boomerang who only once gets to use a boomerang with a camera on it and otherwise mostly punches and stabs the bad guys. Or how about Slipknot who, and I shit you know, is introduced last and is killed in the next scene to show the other characters that Flag and Waller are serious about the whole neck bomb thing.<br />
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I could go on and on about every missed opportunity in this movie, but I feel like I've said enough. There are a few things the movie does get right, though. Firstly, the cast is uniformly excellent. If they had been given better material to work with, I'd be over the moon.<br />
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Margot Robbie wonderfully inhabits Harley Quinn but is saddled with almost no good dialogue whatsoever. She gets a couple laughs, but is far more interesting in the movie's bizarrely placed third-act bar scene. (In fact, this is one of the best scenes in the entire movie as Deadshot, Quinn and Diablo basically lay themselves bare to each other. It's an honest, fascinating scene but it is jammed in right before the film's climax and for the life of me I have no idea why it exists where it does.) On the whole, Will Smith's Deadshot is funnier than Harley ever is.<br />
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Deadshot is also the closest to being an actual hero than the other characters on the squad. He's given more emotional depth and is more sympathetic for the audience since he's motivated by his love for his daughter. He's followed by Diablo, who's wracked with guilt over something he did with his powers — so much that he's given up the violent criminal lifestyle and is most reluctant to be going on this mission, even with the promise of a lighter prison sentence. After Robbie and Smith, Hernandez's Diablo is the best and most interesting character here.<br />
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Viola Davis is also great as Waller, revealing a character who at first just seems interested in being unconventional in her quest to protect the United States but grows more and more repulsive as the film goes on.<br />
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Jai Courtney doesn't get much to do, but makes a bigger impression in a few moments as Boomerang than he did as Kyle Reese in "Terminator: Genisys." And Courtney's an actor who made a big impression on me when I first saw him in Starz's "Spartacus: Blood and Sand" and since then has done nothing but disappoint.<br />
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I should mention Jared Leto's Joker. A lot of ire was fired at him online, and stories of his erratic behavior on set didn't make things much better but to be honest he's a fine Joker. There's just not much here, though. He's not a primary character, even though the film seems to want us to think he is. Whatever murkiness there is about Joker and his motivations I attribute entirely to the script and final edit, rather than Leto's slickly menacing interpretation.<br />
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Ultimately, "Suicide Squad" is a limp superhero actioner full of missed opportunities that's only buoyed by a handful of fun sequences, the occasionally great witty remark and a first-rate cast.<br />
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See Also:<br />
<a href="http://benforreelz.blogspot.com/2013/06/man-of-steel-2013.html">Man of Steel</a><br />
<a href="http://benforreelz.blogspot.com/2016/08/batman-v-superman-dawn-of-justice.html">Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (Ultimate Edition)</a>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06788052045631995191noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8357461209729991855.post-64192343920684154172016-08-03T10:49:00.000-07:002016-08-03T10:49:25.053-07:00"Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice — Ultimate Edition" (2016)Starring Henry Cavill, Ben Affleck and Amy Adams<br />
Written by Chris Terrio and David S. Goyer<br />
Directed by Zack Snyder<br />
Rated R: Violence, language, frightening images<br />
Running Time: 181 Minutes<br />
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8AO19XY2rqc">Trailer</a><br />
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After the battle against the forces of General Zod in Metropolis, the world is divided over how to respond to Superman (Henry Cavill). Some see him as a savior, others as a potential threat. Two men in particular, Bruce Wayne (Ben Affleck) and Lex Luthor (Jesse Eisenberg) fall into the latter group. For months, Wayne, as his alter-ego Batman, has been tearing apart Gotham City's underworld looking for someone or something called the White Portuguese. At the same time, Lex has been manipulating Wayne, the US Government and Lois Lane (Amy Adams) in a plot to discredit and demoralize Superman.<br /><br />As Batman gets closer to his goal, his methods grow more brutal and disturbing. Superman decides he's gone too far, and delivers a warning for Batman to stop or be stopped. Lex decides to take advantage of this rivalry, steering the two heroes toward a confrontation that he hopes will leave Batman dead and Superman disgraced in the eyes of the world.<div>
<a name='more'></a>Oh, okay, here we go... In my original review for the theatrical version of "Batman v Superman," I mentioned that there are parts of this film that work very well and parts that just don't. And that remains true, because most of the problems with the film aren't ones that can really be fixed by editing.</div>
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So what does this new "Ultimate Edition" fix? Firstly, the whole thing feels much more cohesive. Stranded plot threads like Lois' investigation into the events in Africa and how that ties into Lex's plan make much more sense. Clark's revulsion at Batman's increasing brutality is given more grounding and explanation as well. The whole thing just feels like a complete movie, finally... </div>
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...except for the parts that feel like they belong in a totally different movie. One major piece of this movie that editing can't save is Jesse Eisenberg's boffo interpretation of Lex Luthor. He still brings every scene he's in to a grinding, awkward halt. That scene where Luthor gives a speech at a charity function is spectacularly bad. Even though his nefarious plot makes more sense and is better explained, Luthor himself is a huge miscalculation on the part of Eisenberg and the filmmakers, robbing the film's central villain of any real menace and throwing any sense of tonal cohesion out the window.</div>
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Additionally, the film's ham-fisted attempts to set up future DC movies is just as bad as it was before. Batman's apocalyptic vision of a future where Superman has gone bad and Darkseid's parademons is still jarringly edited into the film. If it's supposed to help explain Batman's growing fear and paranoia about Superman's power, that effect is ruined by how awkwardly the whole thing is handled. No attempt was made to smooth the transition from the vision into Flash's appearance from the future — which still ends with Bruce appearing to wake up at his desk. Why is Bruce jarring awake? If it was a vision and/or dream, why are there papers fluttering about in the air behind him?</div>
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The 3rd-act scene where Gal Gadot's Wonder Woman watches video footage of other heroes still feels unnecessary and overlong. It seems to go on much longer than it actually does, for no real reason, when quicker glimpses would have been better and more impactful. </div>
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But here's what it all comes down to: If your problem with "Batman v Superman" had nothing to do with the film's interpretation of these characters, you'll probably find this to be a smoother, more complete film experience. It's still imperfect, but the added footage does help things make more sense and feel less jumbled (though no less jam-packed; there's a lot going on here). </div>
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But if your problem with "Batman v Superman" was that you straight-up hated an emotionally troubled Superman, an overly vicious Batman and an overbearingly bonkers Lex Luthor... this version isn't going to change your mind. The "Ultimate Edition" doesn't change anything about the film on a conceptual level — indeed, it can't — so be warned before settling in for a 3-hour experience that you'll either find to be enlightening or a total slog.</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06788052045631995191noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8357461209729991855.post-70217852663439673212016-07-22T14:17:00.001-07:002016-07-22T14:17:57.719-07:00"Star Trek Beyond" (2016)Starring Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto and Karl Urban<br />
Written by Simon Pegg and Doug Jung<br />
Directed by Justin Lin<br />
Rated PG-13 — Violence, language<br />
Running Time: 122 Minutes<br />
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dCyv5xKIqlw">Trailer</a><br />
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As his birthday approaches, Captain James T. Kirk (Chris Pine) is in a funk. The strain of spending years in deep space is taking its toll on him, his ship and his crew. After the failure of a diplomatic mission, Kirk is ready to throw in the towel and trade the captain’s chair for a desk chair. But a distress call sends the Enterprise to a mysterious planet where a trap has been laid for them.<br />
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A man named Krall (Idris Elba) awaits the Enterprise. His forces tear the ship to pieces, sending it and its crew crashing to the surface. With most of the Enterprise crew imprisoned, Kirk, Spock (Zachary Quinto), McCoy (Karl Urban), Scotty (Simon Pegg) and Chekov (Anton Yelchin) team up with the survivor of another crash, Jaylah (Sofia Boutella) to free their friends and figure out just who Krall is and why he hates the Federation so very, very much.<br />
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For a movie that was kind of famously slapped together (pre-production is said to have lasted a mere six months), “Star Trek Beyond” is a remarkably slick and confident production. Justin Lin steps in to direct for JJ Abrams, while Simon Pegg and Doug Jung replaced Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci as writers, and the difference is palpable.<br />
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For one thing, this is literally a much steadier movie. Save from some of the more frenetic action sequences, Lin keeps the camera steady. There are many more long, lingering shots of the starship Enterprise — obviously designed to allow the audience to get a good last look before the film ends its first act by viciously tearing the ship to shreds. The ship’s arrival at starbase Yorktown is practically a concert performance both visually and aurally as Michael Giacchino unleashes some of his best scoring work yet.<br />
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In some ways, this is a more “traditional” “Star Trek” picture than the previous two films in this reboot series (now officially dubbed the “Kelvin timeline,” apparently). It’s a bit steadier and slower paced, and for the first time since 1998’s “Star Trek: Insurrection” features no scenes taking place on Earth. On the nerdier side of things, “Beyond” does away with the inconsistent notion that warp-speed is near instantaneous travel from the 2009 film and “Into Darkness.” Here, it obviously takes a while for the ship to get from one place to another, even though the geography of the locations in the film are fairly close. Additionally, the dreaded “technobabble” that bogged down so many later “Trek” adventures rears its ugly head here, sadly at a couple of key junctures. (This had me thinking “GET ON WITH IT” for the first time in any of these new reboot movies.)<br />
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The cast seems a bit uneasy with these scenes, and not just because Chris Pine’s Kirk is characterized to be a bit impatient with it — More than once, he tells Scotty to get to the point, in English. But for the vast majority of the movie, it’s the cast that once again proves themselves the masterstroke of this series. Three movies and nearly 10 years deep, no matter what combination of smaller groups you put them in, this ensemble works together in a manner that’s incredibly pleasurable to watch. The movie’s final scene features Kirk wandering through several different conversations going on at once, and it’s an incredibly warm and inviting moment. Over the course of the entire film, it seems like a much more concerted effort to give everyone a bit more to do, and to really drive home how close these characters have become to each other. In particular, Spock and McCoy have a couple of really wonderful scenes where they lay their entire relationship bare. <br />
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Idris Elba is a fine actor to play the villain here, but he seems to struggle under all that alien makeup. It’s not until much later in the film that we really understand him, and but for much of his screentime he does little more than menace Uhura (Zoe Saldanha, kicking a bunch of ass in her scenes). When the reveal finally happens, though, Elba does his stuff and it’s impressive.<br />
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Much brouhaha was made online about Kirk riding a motorcycle in this movie (to which I say, who cares? We saw him riding a motorcycle in the 2009 movie), but this proves not only to make sense but also leads to a heroic moment that garnered great audience approval in the screening I attended. And if you thought perhaps we might move on from Kirk’s love of the Beastie Boys (“Is that... classical music?”) then you thought wrong, because that’s here, too, and it (hilariously) plays a pivotal role in the film’s climax. Stodgy “Star Trek” fans who think nothing but orchestral scores belong in this franchise should steel themselves. <br />
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But despite a middle section that drags a bit after the slam-bang first act closes, and a villain reveal that probably comes a bit too late to have the heft the filmmakers hope it will, “Star Trek Beyond” is a keenly enjoyable experience. It is confident and fun, with great character moments for the cast and a number of rocking action sequences — and one franchise shout-out that had the whole audience cheering.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06788052045631995191noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8357461209729991855.post-55505786877709081962016-07-22T13:54:00.001-07:002016-07-22T13:54:20.266-07:00"Independence Day: Resurgence" (2016)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Starring Jeff Goldblum, Liam Hemsworth and Jessie Usher</div>
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Written by Roland Emmerich, Dean Devlin, Nicholas Wright and James A. Woods</div>
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Directed by Roland Emmerich</div>
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Rated PG-13 — Violence, language</div>
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Running Time: 120 Minutes</div>
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<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RfJgT89hEME">Trailer</a></div>
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Twenty years after “The War of 1996,” humanity stands (mostly) united. Salvaged alien technology has helped rebuild and enhance defenses around the planet, including a moon base and satellite systems with massive energy cannons. In Central Africa, though, one ship managed to land, and the people there fought a decade-long land-war against the invading aliens looking to reap our planet of all its natural resources.</div>
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This is where David Levinson (Jeff Goldblum) discovers that the aliens managed to send a distress signal 20 years earlier that has no been answered by an even larger alien mothership. And so, on July 40, 2016, the aliens return and the war to stave off the destruction of humanity begins anew. But this time, even with all the advances in defense and weapon technology of the last two decades, the people of Earth may not be able to stave off the overwhelming forces stacked against them -- including an alien queen piloting a ship the size of the entire Atlantic Ocean. <br /><a name='more'></a>At one point in this movie, Bill Pullman, returning as ex President James Whitmore, delivers another inspirational speech like in the first film. But this time, he does so with far less ferocity, and to a room full of nobodies that we give even less of a shit about than the main characters. That kind of describes how “Independence Day: Resurgence” is on every level.</div>
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<br />Really, it should come as no surprise to anyone that this movie stinks. Sure, the original is no great piece of art, but it is a great piece of popcorn entertainment: a big-budget spectacle loaded with B-movie charm and shameless gusto. For all its laughable aspects like saving the world with a virus written on an old Macbook, it’s full of technical wizardry, a cast with real chemistry and palpable atmosphere. </div>
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<br />The sequel, two decades later, would like to remind you of that. I guess. “Resurgence” is colorful and loud, and even does a respectable job with world-building, but so poorly constructed and edited that it has absolutely zero resonance or charm. There are times when it seems self-aware enough to have some fun, like pointedly not destroying the White House this time around. </div>
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<br />Nearly the entire original cast returns, save Will Smith and Randy Quaid (both characters are referenced: Smith’s Captain Hiller is seen in a couple photographs while Quaid’s character’s name is shown engraved on the Washington Monument), and they work alongside new, younger cast members to fight off a new wave of aliens but there are now so many of them, and with a runtime some 20 minutes shorter than the first film, none of them have any room to breathe. When the current US President gets one of the film’s few legitimately badass moments (staring down an approaching alien strike force and declaring “There will be no peace”) the film cuts the moment off at the knees by immediately cutting away to another subplot with no time given for the audience to let that moment sink in, or even to let the other characters react in any way. This happens again and again as the movie rockets from scene to scene with no interest in ever exploring the consequences of what’s happening.</div>
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<br />Some of the old characters are brought back for little or no reason, and some of them are dispatched so quickly that it doesn’t even matter. Vivica Fox’s character gets only two scenes before she’s killed when a hospital collapses on her, but Jeff Goldblum’s bumbling dad gets an entire subplot where he (somehow) drives across the entire country with a car-full of kids. </div>
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<br />And still the new characters are never developed or are particularly interesting. There’s not a single one of them that has the cocky charm of Will Smith to enliven the proceedings. </div>
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<br />On a technical level, “Resurgence” looks fine. It has the super-clean digital sheen of a modern Hollywood blockbuster, full of detailed CGI effects but still the occasional fake-looking green-screen. But it’s bright and colorful and has lots of things that go boom, so at least in that respect, the filmmakers did something right. Sadly, David Arnold, the composer who crafted the boisterous, rollicking score for the first film, did not return. Thomas Wander and Harold Kloser provide the music here, which is entirely functional, but only really comes alive when they utilize Arnold’s themes — and those moments are few and far between, reserved for the end credits and the aforementioned silly scene with Pullman’s speechifying.</div>
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<br />The occasional funny moments or cool ideas in “Resurgence” are all overshadowed by editing problems. It’s another piece of popcorn entertainment like the first film, but a disappointingly inert, lesser one, with all of the noise but none of the charm. The potential is there, but it’s all been choked out in the effort to jam too many characters and bigger action set-pieces in a shorter running time.</div>
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<br />Speaking of potential... the film does end with the promise of a truly bonkers, badass third entry as humans (the only species in the universe to have successfully fought off the aliens, twice) are invited to join and lead an intergalactic war for independence. Really my only hope that “Resurgence” is ultimately successful is the possibility that a third movie might feature Jeff Goldblum flying into deep space and meeting all kinds of wacky and absurd new creatures to deal with. But, of course, that’s really only cool if Roland Emmerich manages to get his shit together and do it right.</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06788052045631995191noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8357461209729991855.post-2681587829718935332016-06-04T11:02:00.000-07:002016-06-04T11:19:32.723-07:00"Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows" (2016)Starring Pete Ploszek, Alan Ritchson and Noel Fisher<br />
Written by Josh Appelbaum and Andre Nemec<br />
Directed by Dave Green<br />
Rated PG-13: Violence, language, frightening images<br />
Running Time: 112 Minutes<br />
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3CKgLNGfdSM">Trailer</a><br />
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After saving New York City from the Shredder (Brian Tee), the ninja turtles Leonardo (Pete Ploszek), Raphael (Alan Ritchson), Michelangelo (Noel Fisher) and Donatello (Jeremy Howard) have retreated back into the sewers. Intent on remaining secret from the world above, they allow their friend human Vern (Will Arnett) take the credit for taking down Shredder. Their other human friend, journalist April O'Neil (Megan Fox) remains on the trail of Shredder's cronies and discovers a plan by scientific genius Baxter Stockman (Tyler Perry) to break Shredder out of prison.<br />
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The turtles put in a valiant effort, but are unable to keep Stockman from using an alien teleportation device from whisking Shredder out of police custody. But this miraculous escape has consequences: Shredder is transported to another dimension where he makes a deal with Commander Krang (the unrecognizable voice of Brad Garrett) to find two more pieces of the alien device that will allow Krang to transport his Technodrome war machine to Earth and subjugate its population.<br />
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To help keep the turtles off his back, Krang helps Shredder create two powerful mutants: Bebop (Gary Anthony Williams) and Rocksteady (Stephen Farrelly). But the turtles will have some help of their own: Along with the sage advice of their father Splinter (Tony Shalhoub), April and Vern, they'll be joined by enthusiastic police officer/hockey enthusiast Casey Jones (Stephen Amell) as they battle to take down the Shredder again and protect not just New York but the entire planet from Krang's forces.<br />
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<a name='more'></a>For better and worse, "Out of the Shadows" is probably the closest live-action take to the 1980s "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" cartoon series that remains famous and popular to this day.<br />
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On the one hand, "Out of the Shadows" is as goofy and absurd as such a comparison suggests. It's got all the hallmarks of that series (including an updated version of the theme song over the end credits), generally updated for 2016 live-action. The turtles cruise around the city in an armored garbage truck that has giant robot nunchuck arms and can shoot manhole covers. Krang is an alien brain that lives inside the stomach of a robot battlesuit. There are multiple gags involving pizza, and even the fights generally involve a solid amount of slapstick throughout (especially any involving the enthusiastic-but-dumb Bebop and Rocksteady).<br />
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On the other hand, this means that despite the fact that this is a feature-length live-action piece, it suffers from a plot that makes no sense, paper-thin characters and production that seems more designed around selling toys and merch than making a good film. There is the occasional moment of emotional content here, especially in a couple scenes in the latter half of the movie where the turtles struggle to reconcile their roles as both crime-fighting team and family. But, these bits are, much like the first film, completely perfunctory and exist as nothing more than good ideas that the film is obviously uninterested in exploring. They exist to placate people who might be asking slightly more of their "Ninja Turtles" theatrical experience than brightly colored goofball action.<br />
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The movie rockets from action sequence to action sequence, often not even bothering to determine whether the connective tissue between them makes any sense. On the one hand, the movie has a rhythm and energy to it that makes it light and watchable, but on the other it always seems to feel like a missed opportunity. Anyone who's read some of the TMNT comics, especially the last few years by IDW publishing, can tell you that there's room in the premise for real emotion and interesting plotting... but you won't find it here.<br />
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"Out of the Shadows" also curiously pulls its punches. For a movie called "Out of the Shadows," it's remarkably unwilling to push its characters, um, out of the shadows. Indeed, by the end of the movie, the existence of the turtles is still kept a secret from the public at large — and it's the turtles themselves that don't seem to want to reveal themselves, even at the prodding of the local police, who pledge their support.<br />
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I'm not sure whether this one is an improvement over <a href="http://benforreelz.blogspot.com/2014/08/teenage-mutant-ninja-turtles-2014.html">the 2014 film</a>, but at least it doesn't suffer from the hodge-podge feel of a movie jammed together after last-second reshoots like that one. Instead, it feels like a hodge-podge collection of bubble-gum action sequences. It gets the same things right that the first film did, primarily the performances and personalities of the title characters. One of the best scenes in the movie involves the four brothers arguing about their roles on the team: Leo admonishes Mikey for bungling their mission, and Raph angrily spits at Leo that he "knows everything about strategy, but nothing about emotions." Leo sits alone looking hurt for the rest of the scene. Not long after, Splinter helps Leo realize that it's the brothers' different perspectives that make them valuable to him as a team leader. If there was more stuff like this in the movie, it would probably rate a lot higher.<br />
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The turtles themselves remain the best thing about these movies, but the human characters feel even more worthless here. Megan Fox's April O'Neil is somehow more underwritten here, and Fox's job in most scenes is to just look as pretty as possible while the plot whisks by behind her. On the upside, both Stephen Amell and Tyler Perry seem to know exactly what kind of movie they're in. Both of them are over-acting in the right ways. Amell's Casey Jones isn't the tortured loner the character is usually portrayed as, but instead an enthusiastic cop who wants more than anything to be a <i>good</i> cop and he really enjoys his job. Amell is clearly having fun here, often looking like he's about to break like he's on SNL. Tyler Perry is the same, playing his Baxter Stockman with a kind of nerdy malicious glee like he doesn't even care that this movie isn't good. This kind of self awareness helps make the fact that movie actually isn't good more palatable.<br />
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Ultimately, like before, if you're looking for a legitimately good "Ninja Turtles" movie you should look elsewhere. As a nostalgia piece for the animated series of the 80s, "Out of the Shadows" is probably the closest you'll get without actually revisiting that series... and all that that implies.<br />
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See Also<br />
<a href="http://benforreelz.blogspot.com/2014/08/teenage-mutant-ninja-turtles-2014.html">"Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" (2014)</a><br />
<a href="http://benforreelz.blogspot.com/2011/04/tmnt-2007.html">"TMNT" (2007)</a>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06788052045631995191noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8357461209729991855.post-48661270661797589482016-06-01T14:15:00.000-07:002016-06-01T14:15:39.473-07:00"X-Men: Apocalypse" (2016)Starring James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender and Jennifer Lawrence<br />
Written by Simon Kinberg<br />
Directed by Bryan Singer<br />
Rated PG-13: Violence, language<br />
Running Time: 144 Minutes<br />
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jer8XjMrUB4">Trailer</a><br />
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Ten years after publicly stopping Magneto (Michael Fassbender) from killing President Nixon, shapeshifter Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence) travels the world seeking to help desperate mutants flee persecution. In East Berlin, she finds Nightcrawler (Kodi Smit-McPhee), a teleporter forced to into a cage-fight against the winged Angel (Ben Hardy). But in helping Nightcrawler escape, she hears word that Magneto has resurfaced: he'd been living in Poland, settled down with a wife and daughter until the townsfolk discover who he is. In one tragic moment, his wife and daughter are both killed, and Magneto is on the run again and vowing revenge.<br />
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Soon after, a mysterious mutant appears to Magneto, Angel, the weather-controlling Storm (Alexandra Shipp) and the telepathic Psylocke (Olivia Munn), promising them all enhanced powers and retribution for their suffering at the hands of humans.<br />
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Meanwhile, Professor Charles Xavier (James McAvoy) meets with CIA agent Moira McTaggart (Rose Byrne) for the first time in 20 years and discovers that this mutant is an ancient being known as En Sabah Nur (Oscar Isaac), who was the inspiration for biblical tales of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. With old allies Mystique, Havok (Lucas Till), Quicksilver (Evan Peters) and Beast (Nicholas Hoult), along with newcomers Jean Grey (Sophie Turner) and Cyclops (Tye Sheridan), Charles and the X-Men face their gravest challenge yet: the Apocalypse itself.<br />
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<a name='more'></a>It's easy to forget that there are now nine X-Men films (if we count "Deadpool"), that the first "X-Men" way back in 2000 was one of the films that jump-started the current superhero film era. Part of the problem is that we're now three movies deep into a sort-of reboot of the series featuring younger versions of the characters — except that we're now ignoring previous appearances of younger versions of these characters. So while a young Cyclops appeared in the atrocious "X-Men Origins: Wolverine" film, this young Cyclops is somehow 10 years younger and in a completely different situation.<br />
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In fact, it's probably best not to try and think about these things, since it basically also means that his brother Havok is probably about 20 years older than him, since these new "X-Men" movies like to jump about 10 years each without really aging any of the characters. McAvoy's Xavier even comments on how Rose Byrne's Moira barely seems to have aged in 20 years (indeed, "Apocalypse" comes only 5 years after her first appearance in "X-Men: First Class"). Elsewhere, Angel would have to be born some 20 years earlier than the previous iteration of the character in "X-Men: The Last Stand" and who knows about Jean Grey, previously shown to have been recruited in a time when Xavier and Magneto ran the school together. And here's the franchise's third or fourth Jubilee, here 30 years before the others.<br />
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Aside from its astounding continuity issues in regards to the ages of its characters, "Apocalypse" is a bit of a mess in general with the characters mostly stumbling around not quite sure what to do about themselves or Apocalypse. The film lacks focus and the sense of urgency from "Days of Future Past," but it still manages to be an enjoyable mess. It strives hard to build the X-Men team into a mostly recognizable version of the hugely popular 90s lineup. It also seems like we might need to just straight-up forget the idea of Jennifer Lawrence's Mystique ever becoming the villainous creature that Rebecca Romijn's adult version was in the first trilogy of films.<br />
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That last bit is too bad because it would probably be interesting territory for Lawrence, who aside from the detestable snake she played in "American Hustle" has thus far stayed away from such roles. Meanwhile, McAvoy and Fassbender continue to be the best casting decisions these prequel movies have made, both in the way they inhabit their characters and in their chemistry with each other.<br />
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Oscar Isaac is sadly wasted as Apocalypse. He plays the character much more quietly than one would expect, often speaking barely above a whisper, but the excessive makeup on his face sort of dulls the effect of much of his performance.<br />
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It's Bryan Singer's most "comic book-y" X-Men adventure to date, which has both pluses and drawbacks. Singer still knows how to make a scene like Magneto killing half a dozen cops with a single tiny piece of metal feel cooler and more emotional than some other directors might, but he's also unused to the kind of wide-scale destruction this movie features. The "X-Men" films have always been smaller-scale than Marvel Studios' oft-city destroying antics, but here Singer employs sequences of CGI monument destruction right out of a Roland Emmerich picture, but not quite to the same effect. Sure, we see images of New York, Cairo and Sydney being torn to shreds by Apocalypse and Magneto's newly enhanced powers. Yet these sequences don't have nearly as much heft as the smaller scale, more intimate action sequences in the picture.<br />
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Even a cameo by Hugh Jackman's Wolverine laying waste to Stryker's (Josh Helman) secret Weapon X base, as wholly unnecessary and out of place as it is, feels cooler than some of the bigger set-pieces in the movie. It's because Singer's strengths lay totally in the smaller moments, and that's also why his X-Men movies tend to be stronger than others' but here he overreaches. The overarching problem here is that Apocalypse is a villain that's kind of out of Singer's wheelhouse, the kind of grand, scenery-chewing (literally) over-the-top creature that Singer's not suited for.<br />
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But fret not, as "X-Men: Apocalypse" does have a number of small, powerful moments. Much of the film's first two acts work incredibly well, especially the sequences that introduce or reintroduce us to characters like Magneto, Quicksilver and Storm. And there are lots of little bits of levity sprinkled about that keep things from getting too grim, like Cyclops accidentally blowing away Xavier's favorite tree or an entire sequence of Quicksilver dashing about the mansion rescuing students in slow-motion.<br />
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"X-Men: Apocalypse" does get more right than it does wrong, even ignoring its vastly twisted continuity. It's not as focused or enjoyable or cool as "Days of Future Past" nor as effective as "X2: X-Men United" (from which it borrows quite a bit), but it is a good time at the movies.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06788052045631995191noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8357461209729991855.post-81203611438867042632016-06-01T10:14:00.002-07:002016-06-01T10:14:14.295-07:00"Captain America: Civil War" (2016)Starring Chris Evans, Robert Downey Jr. and Sebastian Stan<br />
Written by Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely<br />
Directed by Anthony and Joe Russo<br />
Rated PG-13: Violence, language<br />
Running Time: 147 Minutes<br />
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dKrVegVI0Us">Trailer</a><br />
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In attempting to avert a terrorist attack in Lagos, the Avengers, led by Steve "Captain America" Rogers (Chris Evans), accidentally cause the deaths of several dozen citizens of the reclusive African nation of Wakanda. Not long after, former general and now Secretary of State Thaddeus "Thunderbolt" Ross (William Hurt) informs the team that the United States has signed on to the Sokovia Accords, an international treaty that would put the Avengers under the direct supervision of the United Nations, in response to the destruction of an entire city in their battle against Ultron.<br />
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And Ross has a surprise supporter with him: "Iron Man" himself, Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.), who, reeling from his guilt over previous adventures, has decided that he and the team are in desperate need of checks and balances. The team is given the choice to stay on and sign the accords, and thus their allegiance, and while most of them are conflicted, particularly Natasha "Black Widow" Romanoff (Scarlett Johansson) and Wanda "Scarlet Witch" Maximoff (Elizabeth Olsen), Cap himself is vehemently against it.<br />
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To make matters worse, Cap's best friend, Bucky Barnes aka The Winter Soldier (Sebastian Stan) is manipulated into killing the king of Wakanda at the signing of the accords, and the Avengers are ordered to bring him in by any means necessary. Torn between protecting his friend from a world calling for blood — especially Wakandan prince T'Challa (Chadwick Boseman) — and his duty, Cap goes rogue to save Bucky and figure out who's really behind all this. But doing so splits the Avengers asunder, with some choosing to help Cap figure out the truth and the others forced to hunt down their friends and colleagues.<br />
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And when it's all over, no matter who wins, one thing is for sure: the Avengers will never be the same.<br />
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<a name='more'></a>Marvel's "Civil War" comic book storyline was one rife with potential but that aside from a few moments of greatness never really went anywhere. Boiled down, it was an entire year's worth of comics that were all the same: every Marvel character ever popped up to have the exact same conversation with each other, over whether they should register with the government and give up their secret identities. Again, there were some great moments, especially a powerful scene in which Cap convinces Spider-Man, who has been on the fence about this whole thing, to switch sides and abandon Iron Man's growing legion for Cap's scrappy resistance.<br />
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The movie version, complicated as it is, is actually much better. In many ways, it's a better "Avengers" movie than the last "Avengers" movie and feels more like a culmination of Marvel's Cinematic Universe "Phase 2" than that film. It builds directly on the events of both "<a href="http://benforreelz.blogspot.com/2015/05/the-avengers-age-of-ultron-2015.html">Age of Ultron</a>" and "<a href="http://benforreelz.blogspot.com/2014/04/captain-america-winter-soldier-2014.html">The Winter Soldier</a>," and also sets up "Spider-Man: Homecoming" and "Black Panther" in a much better fashion. So as a part of the big Marvel machine, "Civil War" works spectacularly. Cramming this many superheroes into one movie should feel like an incredible slog, but instead it feels right and is totally, completely awesome.<br />
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And on that point, "Civil War" totally delivers in the action department. There are plenty of fights and chases in this movie, but the one centerpiece is the film's 2nd-act showdown between both teams at a German airport. Special care is given to make this scene feel huge but also clever, as each character gets to use their specific powers in specific ways that always feels natural and off-the-cuff rather than just designed around money shots for trailers. And seeing <a href="http://benforreelz.blogspot.com/2015/07/ant-man-2015.html">Ant-Man</a> (Paul Rudd) and Spider-Man (Tom Holland) join in the antics is a superb joy, as these two get some of the best moments in an already spectacular sequence.<br />
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In terms of weaknesses, while both Cap and Iron Man have a great storyline here, for Tony parts of this movie feel a bit like a retread. Tony Stark feels like a character in limbo who, after three successful movies of his own, now pops up elsewhere in the Marvel universe without ever changing or growing anymore. Both "Age of Ultron" and "Civil War" present Tony Stark as he was at the beginning of "<a href="http://benforreelz.blogspot.com/2013/05/iron-man-3-2013.html">Iron Man 3</a>," wracked with guilt over his various failures and the amount of destruction surrounding the Avengers and their exploits. Of particular interest this time, though, is that (spoiler alert) Tony seems even worse off by the end of the picture than he was at the beginning. Hopefully that's something that will actually be followed up on. (Quotes in the media of Downey's interest in returning for a 4th standalone "Iron Man" feature might end up serving the character well in this regard).<br />
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Indeed, along with all its flashy action and superheroic titanic clashes, "Civil War" has some fine emotional moments as it mines the fracturing friendships between these characters for all it's worth. In particular, the revelations that split Tony and Steve asunder run deeper than just disagreeing over the Sokovia Accords. Something that was briefly teased in "Winter Soldier" becomes the final twist of the knife in "Civil War" that brings the whole movie together and the Avengers crashing right down at the same time.<br />
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Despite some small missteps and a runtime that might seem daunting (there are subplots and characters here that I didn't even <i>mention</i>), "Captain America: Civil War" is another winner from the Russos, assuring me that the next "Avengers" installment, "Infinity War" is in the right hands. It's solidly crafted summer entertainment that shakes up the status quo of the Marvel universe, without ever feeling as confused and tonally dissonant as DC's similar "<a href="http://benforreelz.blogspot.com/2016/03/batman-v-superman-dawn-of-justice-2016.html">Batman v Superman</a>" (sorry, but you couldn't really expect a review of this movie without that comparison... could you? I almost did it, though...)Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06788052045631995191noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8357461209729991855.post-54501369214762385572016-04-25T10:50:00.001-07:002016-04-25T10:50:49.750-07:00"Maggie" (2015)Starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, Abigail Breslin and Joely Richardson<br />
Written by John Scott 3<br />
Directed by Henry Hobson<br />
Rated PG-13 — Frightening images<br />
Running Time: 95 Minutes<br />
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AQ5Vz8qE8R8">Trailer</a><br />
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Society teeters on the edge of recovery from a major outbreak of a zombie virus, and strict quarantine and curfew rules are in place. Wade Vogel (Arnold Schwarzenegger) travels from his farm to the city to pick up his daughter, who has been infected. The virus takes several weeks to fully transform the infected, so Wade is allowed to take Maggie (Abigail Breslin) home for her final days, thanks to a favor from a doctor friend.<br />
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But as Maggie gets sicker, and the day approaches when Maggie is required to report back to quarantine for termination, Wade struggles with the decision. Will he hand over his daughter to be killed by the government, or will he hold on to her as long as some part is still human, no matter the consequences?<br />
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<a name='more'></a>"Maggie" is a film that is more interesting for what it attempts rather than what it accomplishes, and these are two things: Firstly, it takes all the zombie apocalypse tropes we've gotten used to and twists them into a drama about terminal illness, and, secondly, it forces Arnold Schwarzenegger to act.<br />
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This film is unlike anything Schwarzenegger has done before. Sure, he's played fathers and family men before, but usually in comedies and action films. Here, he must play a father coming to grips with the fact that his daughter is essentially wasting away before his very eyes. And he'll be forced to make a decision about what to do with her when the time comes, a moral quandary that no father should face.<br />
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Of course, there are limits to Schwarzenegger's range. He's never been a particularly powerful actor in the emotional sense; he's always gotten by on his physical presence and capable but not amazing comedic sense. He bites off a bit more than he can chew here, but the screenplay and director Henry Hobson are smart enough to keep everything pretty restrained so that Schwarzenegger can make this all work. That Schwarzenegger plays such a quiet, unassuming man at all is probably a shrewd bit of casting on the filmmakers' part, as much as it is an attempt by Schwarzenegger to try something new in his advancing years. There are only so many times you can go back to being the Terminator, y'know?<br />
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So even though this is not what some would say is a great performance, it's still a pretty great performance <i>for Arnold Schwarzenegger</i>, and that in itself is fascinating to me.<br />
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Sometimes what's more important than a great individual performance is chemistry with the other actor, and in this regard, Schwarzenegger and Breslin work well enough. There's a good sense of Schwarzenegger as a caring, overprotective father and Breslin as a daughter who regrets having to put her family through all of this. But there are too many scenes that are basically just one character or the other alone dealing with their sadness, and perhaps this is done on purpose because it makes the scenes where they're together into highlights, but it also robs the film overall of some of the heft it ought to have.<br />
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The other thing, treating the zombie infection like this was a cancer drama, is also pretty interesting, but also has its own obvious limitations. For one thing, turning into a zombie really is nothing like getting cancer, and so the logic of some of the things that happen here is wonky. When someone is on the verge of turning into a creature hungry for human flesh, it doesn't make all that much sense that she's allowed to, say, go out for a bonfire night in the woods with her friends. So while this sort of thing is perfectly acceptable for someone whose cancer is advancing, it's not for someone who's turning into a zombie.<br />
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So while the attempt is admirable, the outcome only works intermittently. There are a lot of great scenes here, but not all of them work and they don't build to a greater whole. It treats both the zombie horror film aspects and the drama aspects equally, but those things don't demand to be treated equally because they can't be. And the film strains under that weight, even while it remains pretty watchable overall.<br />
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The film's dour photography and monotonous score don't help, either. Even in broad daylight, colors are muted save for a few sunrise and sunset shots. Meanwhile, the music by David Wingo sounds the same in almost every scene. In their search for a ponderous tone, I think the filmmakers felt everything about the movie had to be dour and desaturated, but instead it's the moments where there are splashes of color and light when "Maggie" interesting to look at. The rest of it is unrelentingly gray, even when it doesn't need to be.<br />
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So "Maggie" has lofty goals, which I appreciate, but it only partially hits its target. It's an interesting experiment, one that I hope someone follows up on — not in the sense that this is a film crying out for a sequel, but that this approach to the material is one that is worth further exploration. And props to Schwarzenegger for taking the risk on this one, too.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06788052045631995191noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8357461209729991855.post-45688546023903377392016-04-19T12:52:00.000-07:002016-04-19T12:52:10.605-07:00'Supergirl' Season 1 - (2015)Starring Melissa Benoist, Mehcad Brooks and Chyler Leigh<br />
Developed by Ali Adler, Greg Berlanti and Andrew Kreisberg<br />
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIAOA0FqhAI">Trailer</a><br />
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Kara Zor-El (Melissa Benoist) is, like her cousin Kal El, an orphan from the planet Krypton. Just before that planet's destruction, Kara's parents put her in a spaceship headed for Earth where she would be tasked with raising and protecting her infant cousin Kal. Unfortunately, Kal's ship made it to Earth first, and he grew up to become the world's greatest hero — Superman.<br />
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Kal stashes Kara with two kindly scientists, Jeremiah and Eliza Danvers (Dean Cain and Helen Slater, in a cheeky bit of casting) who teach her to hide her powers and fit in with humans. Kara grows quite close with her new human sister, Alex (Chyler Leigh). As an adult, Kara gets a job at a media company run by the glamorous and powerful Cat Grant (Calista Flockhart), alongside her best friend Winn Schott Jr. (Jeremy Jordan) and Superman's best friend James Olsen (Mehcad Brooks).<br />
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By day, she's mild-mannered Kara Danvers. By... well, also often in the day, and night, she is also Supergirl defender of justice for National City. New to the game, Supergirl must figure out not just how hone her powers against villains that threaten the populace but also to be the hero that National City needs, and maybe even that the entire world needs.<br />
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<a name='more'></a>"Supergirl" is a show and a concept ripe with potential. Many incarnations of the character have come and gone, including some where she's not actually Superman's cousin but a shapeshifting alien (don't ask), but this one pulls from the most famous, that of Superman's younger, less experienced cousin. Coming from the makers of the successful "Arrow" and "Flash" series on the CW, "Supergirl" seemed poised to make a big bold debut for CBS (the "C" part of CW).<br />
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Unfortunately, despite years of experience making superhero television and especially a bang-up job on the first season of "The Flash," the makers of "Supergirl" stumble a bit here. There's a lot to like about this show, and when it works, it works extremely well. The problem is that for every part of it that is a total hoot, there's something else about it that is so wrong that it's mind-boggling.<br />
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The elephant in the room, for example, is Superman. The Man of Steel appears very briefly in this series, but never speaks a word of dialogue and we never even see his face. There are some cute moments where he texts Kara to congratulate her on a job well done or to ask if she is okay after a particularly harrowing encounter with the villain of the week, but otherwise the show does an obvious and terrible job tiptoeing around Superman that it becomes aggravating. The producers obviously want Kara to stand on her own — indeed, one of the main themes of the show is Kara's independence and strength not just as a superhero but as a woman — but this is the worst way to go about it. In one scene in the season finale, it's almost laugh-out-loud hilarious that Superman is lying comatose on a hospital bed while Kara and J'onn J'onzz (David Harewood) have an emotional discussion about saving the world, and all we ever see is Superman's feet.<br />
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In my mind, a much better way to handle having Superman not steal Kara's thunder is to put him in a supporting role. There were so many ways to have Superman be helping out but not having him be the primary figure. Let him be the loving, supportive cousin we're constantly reminded that he is. But actually having him as unconscious set-dressing is just terrible. The show wants so badly for Kara to stand on her own that it hamstrings itself in the process.<br />
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Indeed, the series makes a number of gaffs that mostly involve Kryptonians. The season's main arc focuses on escaped villains from the Phantom Zone, led by Kara's aunt Astra (Laura Benanti) and her husband Non (Chris Vance). These two actually have an army of Kryptonians who are always conveniently absent during their showdowns with Kara and the others. In the finale, Non very stupidly puts all the other Kryptonians into stasis in anticipation of his victory over Supergirl. <i>What? </i><br />
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The show stumbles in other places as well, but to be honest, none of them really break the back of the show. It makes "Supergirl" a frustrating experience, albeit an entertaining one.<br />
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For one thing, the characterization and portrayal of Kara herself is wonderful. Melissa Benoist is excellent, and clearly having a blast playing this character. Most of the best scenes in the show involve her in one way or another, whether it's her wonderful chemistry with her other castmates or her surprisingly adept special effects-aided superheroics. In particular, most of the scenes between Benoist and Flockhart are wonderful.<br />
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The series also does a wonderful job mining the DC universe for characters, much like its CW counterparts, and has a lot of fun bringing in villains like Silver Banshee (Italia Ricci), Livewire (Brit Morgan), Indigo (Laura Vandervoort), and Toyman (Henry Czerny), and characters like Sam and Lucy Lane (Glen Morshower and Jenna Dewan-Tatum), Lois Lane's father and sister, Maxwell Lord (Peter Facinelli) and, in one of the season's best episodes, Grant Gustin as the Flash.<br />
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The Flash crossover is one of the season's best episodes because it eschews the tried-and-true method of having two heroes fight the first time they meet. Instead, Flash and Supergirl almost instantly become best friends, leading to a number of scenes that are just a joy to watch as Kara and Barry geek out about their powers and the idea of alternate universes. This episode also features what is the series' absolute funniest moment so far, which is Kara's reaction to being handed an ice cream cone at super-speed.<br />
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"Supergirl" is a bright and generally upbeat TV series, which is great. The tone of the whole thing works great, and the whole thing is slickly produced and features a lot of great performances. But it is a wholly inconsistent experience. Almost every episode has a few moments that will cause the audience to scrunch up their face and ask, "Huh? Why?" The pieces are there for "Supergirl" to have a wildly fun second season, but it took a while for this first go-round to find its feet, and even then it seems on shaky ground.<br />
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I want this series to succeed because it's so very close to being great. I hope it gets a second season and really takes a hard look at what's working and what isn't. For right now, the show doesn't really soar, even though its back half is significantly improved from its beginnings.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06788052045631995191noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8357461209729991855.post-13964440835618097202016-03-26T14:29:00.000-07:002016-03-26T14:29:25.397-07:00"Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice" (2016)Starring Ben Affleck, Henry Cavill and Amy Adams<br />
Written by Chris Terrio and David S. Goyer<br />
Directed by Zack Snyder<br />
Rated PG-13: Violence, language, frightening images<br />
Running Time: 151 Minutes<br />
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eX_iASz1Si8">Trailer</a><br />
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After the battle against the forces of General Zod in Metropolis, the world is divided over how to respond to Superman (Henry Cavill). Some see him as a savior, others as a potential threat. Two men in particular, Bruce Wayne (Ben Affleck) and Lex Luthor (Jesse Eisenberg) fall into the latter group. For months, Wayne, as his alter-ego Batman, has been tearing apart Gotham City's underworld looking for someone or something called the White Portuguese. At the same time, Lex has been manipulating Wayne, the US Government and Lois Lane (Amy Adams) in a plot to discredit and demoralize Superman.<br />
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As Batman gets closer to his goal, his methods grow more brutal and disturbing. Superman decides he's gone too far, and delivers a warning for Batman to stop or be stopped. Lex decides to take advantage of this rivalry, steering the two heroes toward a confrontation that he hopes will leave Batman dead and Superman disgraced in the eyes of the world.<br />
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<a name='more'></a>This is a tough one. I love these two characters, I really do. So when there's finally a big-budget tentpole film about the two of them meeting, I'm going to be there. Its predecessor, 2013's "Man of Steel" was a highly divisive film, and this movie was even more so before it even came out.<br />
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A quick look at the production history of this movie is probably necessary — originally conceived as a sequel to <a href="http://benforreelz.blogspot.com/2013/06/man-of-steel-2013.html">"Man of Steel,"</a> it was expanded so that DC and Warner Bros could jump-start their shared-universe series of movies in the style of Marvel's efforts over the last decade. And from that moment on, people became pre-determined to hate this movie. Every piece of casting, every photo, every clip was roasted online, viciously. Ben Affleck, having suffered much for his disastrous 2003 performance as "Daredevil," was mercilessly lambasted for taking on the role of Batman, and Gal Gadot was on the receiving end of a horrid amount of comments regarding her physical appearance.<br />
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So it's not much of a surprise when the film comes around, and those same movie critics who complained about the movie looking "too dark/grim, not fun" basically parrot what they've all been saying for the last year and a half in their final reviews.<br />
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The question, of course, is... are they right?<br />
<br />
Yes and no.<br />
<br />
Firstly, both Affleck and Gadot prove their haters so very, very wrong. Both of them do very fine things as Bruce and Diana respectively. In fact, much of the overall portrayal of Batman here is excellent, from his design and movements to his obsessive nature, and his interactions with Alfred (Jeremy Irons). Gadot equally nails Wonder Woman, especially in the film's climactic battle. She's fierce and powerful, and has a really great moment after getting knocked down where she wordlessly reveals her enjoyment of combat.<br />
<br />
But for every good thing about this movie, there's another thing about it that is somewhat bewildering. For example, Batman has some kind of prophetic nightmare of the future in which Superman, driven mad by Lois' death, has essentially laid waste to the world and rules it with an iron fist. In this dream, Batman is attempting to secure a chunk of kryptonite, but ends up being captured and killed. But before he is, he slaughters a number of Superman's followers, using guns. This whole sequence is extremely strange, not just for the shocking imagery of Batman blowing people away with guns, but also because of how it ends — with a vision of the Flash (Ezra Miller) appearing from the future to warn Batman that he was right all along... which then ends with Bruce awakening with a start in the batcave. So, was this all a dream? What about the part with the Flash? That can't have been a dream because Bruce has no idea who the Flash is at this point in the movie, and yet, that's how the movie plays it.<br />
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Even in parts of the movie that aren't a dream, Batman is blowing people away with the guns on his car or his plane. More than once, he blows up cars and trucks full of bad guys. But then when he goes in and takes them on by hand, he takes out their guns first and no one dies (even though there are lots of broken bones, and a few of them are probably paralyzed for life). It's very strange (though, of course, not without precedent — particularly in the Tim Burton movies, where Batman more than once hurls thugs off of buildings, lights them on fire or shoves dynamite in their pants).<br />
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Equally disappointing is how wasted Lois Lane and the Daily Planet feel here. Clark is deeply intent on running a story about the Batman and how dangerous he might be. Perry White (Laurence Fishburne) is inexplicably uninterested in such a story, and instead demands that Clark cover a football game and a library opening. As a journalist myself, I can't tell how you strange it is that Perry doesn't want to run stories about the increasing brutality of Gotham's oddball vigilante.<br />
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Probably the most disastrous part of the movie is Jesse Eisenberg's Lex Luthor. He feels like he stepped in out of a completely different movie, chewing the scenery in a way that ruins almost every scene he's in. Michael Shannon had a particular menace as Zod that made his angry, desperate performance work. Eisenberg seems to be going for some kind of mix between Gene Hackman's Luthor and Tobey Maguire's douchey Peter Parker from that <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zOtpeYERu9w">awful scene in "Spider-Man 3."</a><br />
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All of these things lead to a movie that's not terrible, but mostly just kind of inert. I see what they were trying to do, and honestly with just some tweaks it'd be almost there. There are a lot of fine scenes in this movie, and a good number of solid concepts at play, but when you add them all up they make a less than satisfying whole.<br />
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Like with 2014's <a href="http://benforreelz.blogspot.com/2014/05/the-amazing-spider-man-2-2014.html">"Amazing Spider-Man 2"</a> — there's just too much going on here, too much franchise-wanking, for the movie to stand on its own. It feels inconsistent in tone and goal, too overstuffed for its ideas to be fully explored.<br />
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In the places where it tries something new, it works pretty well. Having Clark and Lois in a loving, committed relationship instead of falling back on any kind of will-they-won't-they stuff is great, a natural progression of how well Lois was handled in "Man of Steel." And the debate over Superman himself and his motivations by the public at large, the way the government reacts to him, all feels right. It even feels natural that Batman would see Superman as a potential threat, since that's a concept that's come up plenty of times in the comics.<br />
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But unfortunately, in a lot of places where it counts, "Dawn of Justice" is just kind of there. There were a number of scenes, particularly those involving nods to other DC characters, where it feels like the studio said, "Put in a scene with the Flash here" or "reference Aquaman here," which is very unnatural and jarring. The parts of this movie that work, work. The parts that don't... don't.<br />
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See Also<br />
<a href="http://benforreelz.blogspot.com/2013/06/man-of-steel-2013.html">Man of Steel (2013)</a>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06788052045631995191noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8357461209729991855.post-2039199785605349872016-03-20T13:35:00.001-07:002016-03-20T13:35:54.774-07:00"10 Cloverfield Lane" (2016)Starring Mary Elizabeth Winstead, John Goodman and John Gallagher Jr.<br />
Written by Josh Campbell, Matt Stuecken and Damien Chazelle<br />
Directed by Dan Trachtenberg<br />
Rated PG-13 — Violence, language, frightening images<br />
Running Time: 103 Minutes<br />
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=saHzng8fxLs">Trailer</a><br />
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Michelle (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) hits the road, running from her potential marriage for reasons unknown. But after night falls, a pickup truck runs her off the road and she awakens chained to a wall in a fallout shelter built by Howard (John Goodman) who insists that the world outside has been decimated by some kind of attack.<br />
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The third member of their little group is Emmett, a former high school track star who helped Howard construct his shelter. But Emmett and Michelle start to notice the cracks in Howard's story. And Howard's behavior grows increasingly unhinged, despite his protestations that he's simply looking out for everyone's best interests.<br />
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Michelle and Emmett hatch a plan for escape, but can they outwit Howard? And what kind of world is actually waiting for them outside?<br />
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<a name='more'></a>Color me surprised. While I was a fan of the original found-footage "Cloverfield" film, I know that it's highly polarizing — people either loved it or loathed it. While there's actually very little here to connect the two films, I still wasn't sure what to think going into "10 Cloverfield Lane" but this movie is good.<br />
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Firstly, it's an extremely small film. There are literally only four people in it, and one person you only hear over the phone and another heard on the radio. That's it. Otherwise, it's just our three main characters and the only location besides the opening shots of Michelle's apartment and her road trip is inside the bunker. Director Trachtenberg does a good job helping us understand the geography of the bunker, so we're always sure where we are within it.<br />
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The great thing here is really the marriage of a solid script with some really good performances. In particular, John Goodman is great as Howard the conspiracy nut. It's really great how the film plays with whether or not Howard is crazy or evil, and Goodman plays Howard in a very sincere manner that makes him alternately sympathetic and menacing. A scene with the three of them playing a guessing game is particularly tense, and when the moment passes there's a palpable sense of relief for both the characters and the audience, and much of that is a credit to Goodman's line delivery in this scene.<br />
<br />
Mary Elizabeth Winstead holds her own, and the character of Michelle is written in a particularly pleasing fashion, as well. She's shown to be thoughtful, decisive and capable. When she first awakens in Howard's bunker, she's chained to the wall with her cellphone sitting on the floor across the room, out of reach. She quickly figures out a way to get it, however, and not long after that is already coming up with a couple different plans to get Howard to unlock the door so she can attempt escape. Winstead is good at playing Michelle as someone who takes in her surroundings and then decides how to act. In one scene as the three are eating dinner, she takes a moment to consider Howard's request that she and Emmett stop talking during dinner and never touch each other and then she acts on it, and her though process comes across clearly.<br />
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There are a number of really good, tense scenes in this film. Everything is shot and edited confidently, and a film taking place in a bunker could easily be visually uninteresting but it's not. Each area of the bunker is distinct, and even Michelle's bare-walled bedroom ends up having a bit of personality of its own.<br />
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Of course, it's a "Cloverfield" movie, so the ending is completely bonkers compared to what came before. If you know what that means, then you've probably already figured out where this film is eventually going to go. But it's still really entertaining getting there. Once you're there, though, you as the audience have to decide whether you're on board with it or not. If you're not, you're going to walk out of this film angry. If you are, though, you're probably going to really enjoy this movie even if the climax feels almost like it came from a different movie entirely.<br />
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Special note must be made for Bear McCreary's wonderful musical score. Bravo, sir.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06788052045631995191noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8357461209729991855.post-17986205096051842812016-03-03T14:40:00.001-08:002016-03-03T14:40:25.332-08:00"Justice League: War" (2014)Starring Jason O'Mara, Alan Tudyk and Michelle Monaghan<br />
Written by Heath Corson<br />
Directed by Jay Oliva<br />
Rated PG-13 — Animated violence, language<br />
Running Time: 79 Minutes<br />
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q3F9ASSsHUk">Trailer</a><br />
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Green Lantern (Justin Kirk) heads to Gotham City to investigate a series of kidnappings being blamed in the media on the Batman (Jason O'Mara). Instead, he discovers the culprit is an alien creature from the dark world of Apokolips attempting to plant some kind of device — a Mother Box — in the city's sewers. After totally flubbing his encounter with the parademons, Batman saves him and the two head for Metropolis, hoping to question Superman (Alan Tudyk) about the device's alien origins.<br />
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Meanwhile, in Washington, DC, Wonder Woman (Michelle Monaghan) is frustrated at having to wait for a meeting with the President when she encounters parademons attempting to breach the White House. In Central City, scientist Silas Stone (Rocky Carroll) and his son Victor (Shemar Moore) are having an argument while Silas investigates a dead parademon captured by the Flash (Christopher Gorham). An ensuing explosion from the creature's Mother Box infects Victor with an alien energy, forcing Silas to transform him into Cyborg to save his life.<br />
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Soon enough, the Mother Boxes open more boom tube portals between Earth and Apokolips, allowing Darkseid's (Steven Blum) army of parademons to assault various cities. Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, Flash, Cyborg and Captain Marvel (Sean Astin) realize they must join forces to protect the entire planet from a full-on alien invasion.<br />
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They just don't like each other all that much.<br />
<br />
<a name='more'></a>I wasn't a huge fan of the six-issue opening arc of the "Justice League" comic book that this movie is based on, and the movie doesn't do much to improve on it. I thought a similar story was told better in the "Justice League" TV series, which also had the benefit of a much better cast.<br />
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Still, this is half decent for a couple reasons. The animation works, even if some of the character designs are a little awkward. Superman's face is strangely tiny compared to the size of his head, for example. Much the film (almost its entirety, to be honest) is given over to ever-increasing fight sequences between the Justice League and the parademons and ultimately Darkseid. So there's lots of opportunity for large scale comic book-style destruction of municipal property. Still, by the third time you've seen Wonder Woman use her lasso to swing one parademon into a group of others and knock them through a building, it gets a bit dull.<br />
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The second reason is because this movie takes a hilariously dim view of Green Lantern, who is characterized here as a total buffoon. Throughout the entire movie, Batman throws shade on GL, and his utter disdain is a joy to behold. Even the other characters can barely seem to stand the guy, and in a brief encounter with Superman, the Man of Steel seems almost amused at GL's attempts to fight him. I've made no secret of my own dislike for Green Lantern, who on a conceptual level is one of mainstream comics' worst creations. It's good to see an entire movie that plays with the idea of how stupid GL is.<br />
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Other than that, there's really not much here. Very little in the way of character development occurs, and what there is could be generously referred to as perfunctory. These sort of team-up stories often eschew character development in favor of team dynamics, but even that feels slight here. It's not until the film's final moments that the characters really figure out how to work together (and then somehow the climactic battle against Darkseid seems to take forever).<br />
<br />
If you want to see a better take on a similar story, check out the early 2000s "Justice League" TV series, which also streams on Netflix. This movie isn't terrible, but there's very little here beyond the lengthy battle sequences that grow pretty repetitive.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06788052045631995191noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8357461209729991855.post-87169245645108592412016-02-28T17:53:00.001-08:002016-02-28T17:58:29.594-08:00"Gods of Egypt" (2016)Starring Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, Brenton Thwaites and Gerard Butler<br />
Written by Matt Sazama and Burk Sharpless<br />
Directed by Alex Proyas<br />
Rated PG-13 — Violence<br />
Running Time: 127 Minutes<br />
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJBnK2wNQSo">Trailer</a><br />
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In a world where the Egyptian gods live among man, Horus (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) is about to be crowned king as successor to his father, Osiris (Bryan Brown). But during the coronation ceremony, Osiris' brother Set (Gerard Butler) arrives with an army, kills Osiris and claims the throne for himself. He steals Horus' eyes and begins a campaign to conquer any of the other gods who oppose his rule.<br />
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A year later, Set has conquered the entire world of man, leaving only the skies above and the afterlife. A young mortal thief, Bek (Brenton Thwaites), is convinced by his girlfriend Zaya (Courtney Eaton) to break into Set's vault to steal back Horus' eyes so Horus can lead an uprising and free the people. Unfortunately, Zaya's plan is discovered by her slave master, Urshu (Rufus Sewell) the architect from whom she steals the plans.<br />
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Zaya is killed while she and Bek escape Urshu, so when Bek tracks down Horus he makes a deal with the fallen god to get Zaya back from the afterlife in exchange for Horus' eye. Now, Horus and Bek have only a couple days to defeat Set before Zaya's soul is lost forever.<br />
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...or something.<br />
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<a name='more'></a>This movie is awful. Let's just be clear on that right from the start.<br />
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With that in mind, let's also be clear that this is also why "Gods of Egypt" is amazing. This is the kind of movie that you go into knowing <i>and</i> <i>hoping</i> for it to be nothing but a $150 million dumpster fire. And guess what: it is.<br />
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This movie is 120 minutes of actors looking lost, confused and bored, attempting to play out a script that is somehow both nonsensical and over-explained, all surrounded by truckloads of bad special effects.<br />
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Every scene in which Geoffrey Rush appears as Ra, for example. Ra circles the Earth (which is flat, ps) on some kind of space-boat (not a space ship... it's a boat, that sails through space but also... some... kind of glowing water? I don't know) towing the sun with a gigantic chain. Every night, he fights off the demon Apophis (which is a giant CGI worm made up of teeth and clouds and is the only genuinely awesome thing in this entire movie). Rush in some shots is on fire, one of his powers, I suppose, but it's obviously all done with CGI, and Rush looks very confused the entire time — as though he's thinking to himself, "Am I supposed to be on fire right now?"<br />
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In a film loaded with terrible performances, the absolute hands-down worst however is Chadwick Boseman as Thoth, the god of wisdom. I'm really not sure what he was going for here, but "good" is not it. Absolutely every line he delivers is somehow both wooden and overwrought. It's painful and hilarious at the same time.<br />
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Which is pretty much this movie in a nutshell.<br />
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In one particularly bad scene, Courtney Eaton's Zaya has made it to the gates of the afterlife, where Set has decreed the dead must buy their way into heaven. Unfortunately, Zaya has nothing since she's a poor slave. There are two people in front of her: an old man loaded with gold trinkets and an old woman equally as penniless as Zaya. The old man gives up his offering, walks forward to the gate and suddenly screams "I'M GOING TO LIVE FOR-EV-ERRRRRRRRR" for no reason that I can imagine. Then the old woman walks forward, has nothing to offer, and is immediately and painfully torn to shreds for her trouble. The whole thing is so ineptly portrayed that it becomes hilarious.<br />
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Much was made of the cast's racial makeup, and basically, it's kind of hilarious how black people are just set dressing here. The filmmakers used the film's fantasy setting (it's clearly not the actual Egypt, or even the real planet Earth) but that is sort of a flimsy excuse because if it is a fantasy setting then it makes even more sense for the diversity of the background characters to reflect the diversity of the main speaking cast. Boseman is the only person of color who has more than one line, and he flubs the whole thing. Half-Cambodian Elodie Yung plays Hathor, the goddess of love, and fares much better than Boseman in every respect — Except for the fact that her eyelines don't match up in scenes when she's speaking to Bek, since the gods in this movie look exactly like humans but are something like 10 feet tall, so they were digitally enlarged.<br />
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The special effects are just as bad as the acting and the script. In one scene, Horus fights off Set's hunters atop a waterfall. I'm not sure exactly what was supposed to be happening here but the camera spins around like bullet-time from "The Matrix" and every other action movie in the late 90s/early 2000s, except sometimes the action is still happening at full-speed. It's confusing, but also looks <i>fucking terrible</i> even when you can tell what's going on. None of the other action sequences in the movie use this technique, which is <i>even more baffling</i>.<br />
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The film's climax is an exercise in WTFery, as Horus, Bek and Set battle atop a huge obelisk while Apophis <i>literally eats Egypt</i>. The top of an obelisk, as you might expect, is a pyramid. At more than one occasion, Set fails to do the one thing that would ensure his victory: throw Horus and Bek over the side. In fact, at one point, he has Bek in his hands and they're standing on the edge and Set turns and throws Bek to safety then attacks again! The film contrives a situation in which Horus must make a moral choice, except it's so contrived that it's completely stupid and he would have been able to complete his task if he'd actually made the opposite choice than the one he does. Instead, the film decides to throw out its own rules at this point (not that any of it made any sense to begin with) and reward him for his own stupidity.<br />
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Y'know, I feel bad for Alex Proyas. I didn't care much for "The Crow," but "Dark City" was great and even "I, Robot" is underrated. But he always felt like he should be making better movies. In the past, he's had a good eye for images and while there is some good imagery hidden in the wasteland of terrible that is "Gods of Egypt," this is easily his worst and worst-looking film. I bet at some point during pre-production, people were looking at all the artwork and designs and thinking that this looks pretty fucking cool.<br />
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Unfortunately, that's probably the last time anybody thought "Gods of Egypt" was going to be anything more than a hot flaming piece of shit.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06788052045631995191noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8357461209729991855.post-83929620403419978772016-02-23T17:28:00.000-08:002016-02-23T17:32:13.833-08:00"Deadpool" (2016)Starring Ryan Reynolds, TJ Miller and Morena Baccarin<br />
Written by Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick<br />
Directed by Tim Miller<br />
Rated R — Violence, language, sex/nudity<br />
Running Time: 108 Minutes<br />
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZIM1HydF9UA">Trailer (Red Band)</a><br />
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Wade Wilson ( Ryan Reynolds) is a fast-talking mercenary who likes to take on jobs where he can jerk people around. He's got a bit of a reputation for helping out underdogs and those he feels deserve help, though he'll angrily refute that if you ask him. After meeting and falling in love with Vanessa (Morena Baccarin) at his friend Weasel's (TJ Miller) bar, Wade discovers he's got cancer and doesn't have long to live.<br />
<br />
In comes a recruiter (Jed Rees) for what Wade is told is a super-secret superhero development project. But what Wade discovers too late is that he's actually just signed himself up to become a guinea pig for a mutant named Ajax (Ed Skrein) who is trying to create the ultimate super-soldiers to be sold into slavery to the highest bidder. When Ajax's experiments leave Wade able to heal from almost any wound, but hideously disabled, he breaks free and spends the next year trying to track down Ajax and get revenge for what was done to him.<br />
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All the while, Wade, now going by the name Deadpool, is hounded by Colossus (voice of Stefan Kapicic) who wants to recruit Wade into the X-Men. And Wade still has that nagging issue of being in love with Vanessa, who also hasn't gotten over Wade. He just can't stand to visit her while he's still a hideous freak. Not until he's gotten Ajax to reverse whatever was done to him... at whatever the cost.<br />
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<a name='more'></a>"Deadpool" took a long and interesting road to the big screen, from aborted attempts in the early 2000s to the 2009 dumpster-fire that was "X-Men Origins: Wolverine" and several appearances in animation. And now that it's finally here, audiences are eating it up... but does that mean it's really making an impression?<br />
<br />
In just a couple weekends, "Deadpool" has racked up an impressive box office total nearing $500 million, basically more than any of the other previous X-Men movies. I myself found the film humorous and competently made, but other than it's R-rated, ribald humor, there's nothing particularly special or memorable about it. Most of the rapid-fire jokes are just pop culture references — some more clever than others, for sure. When Colossus says he wants Deadpool to meet with Professor X, Deadpool quips, "Stewart or McAvoy?" And while this is funny, the best part about it is really Reynolds' enthusiastic delivery.<br />
<br />
And that's basically the problem with the film as a whole: It's just a vehicle for Reynolds to poke fun at other superhero movies, even his own. In terms of story, the plot, such as it is, is thinly-drawn even by origin-story standards. There is absolutely no character development for basically anyone involved here, especially Colossus or for his sidekick, Negasonic Teenage Warhead (Brianna Hildebrand), who only exist in the narrative as plot devices and more fodder for Deadpool's wit. Some of the film's funniest lines involve Wade's blind, elderly, IKEA-obsessed roommate, played by Leslie Uggams.<br />
<br />
On the villain front, we get Ajax, whose powers and motivations are about as basic as they get. Interestingly, Ajax primarily brings everything down upon himself simply because he's A) an unmitigated asshole and B) he and Wade just flat-out hate each other. His henchwoman, Angel Dust, played by the ever-lovely Gina Carano, barely speaks a word but gets one hell of a fight sequence with Colossus at the film's climax. There's literally nothing else for her character; she's there to look pretty and fight Colossus.<br />
<br />
Morena Baccarin fares well enough as Vanessa, Deadpool's ex and damsel in distress (though she manages to take care of herself well enough in the fight), but aside from having great chemistry with Reynolds enough to sell the audience on their relationship we also barely know anything about her, either.<br />
<br />
"Deadpool" is a series of admittedly cool action sequences strung together with the barest of plots and more wisecracking than any of the Ninja Turtles could ever hope to pull off. The whole thing is a showcase for Reynolds to fool around, and while that works and it's entertaining... that's really all it is. And perhaps that's all it needs to be. Fox made a $60 million gamble that paid off, but now the expectations have to be upped for the sequel. And I don't think that we need to sacrifice any of the humor or silliness by embracing smarter plotting or deeper characterization.<br />
<br />
Until then, though, "Deadpool" is a lot of fun. You should give it a shot.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06788052045631995191noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8357461209729991855.post-6681959175791761842015-11-29T18:46:00.001-08:002015-11-29T18:52:25.614-08:00"Creed" (2015)Starring Michael B. Jordan, Sylvester Stallone and Tessa Thompson<br />
Written by Ryan Coogler and Aaron Covington<br />
Directed by Ryan Coogler<br />
Rated PG-13 — Violence, language, sex<br />
Running Time: 133 Minutes<br />
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQ9OhBYjTds">Trailer</a><br />
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Adonis "Donnie" Johnson (Michael B. Jordan) is the illegitimate son of the late boxing champ Apollo Creed. He lives in Creed's old home with Creed's wife Mary Anne (Phylicia Rishad), and he even burns inside to be a boxer. But he rejects the Creed name, wanting instead to make a name for himself.<br />
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After losing a bout at his father's old gym because of his arrogance and hot temper, Donnie quits his job in finance and, against Mary Anne's wishes, moves to Philadelphia. There he tracks down Apollo's old rival, friend and trainer: Rocky Balboa (Sylvester Stallone). He asks Rocky to train him to be a boxer, and Rocky reluctantly accepts.<br />
<br />
At the same time, the current champion of the world "Pretty" Ricky Conlan (Tony Bellew) is looking for one last fight before he faces a prison charge for gun possession in the UK. When his manager hears that Johnson is actually the son of the legendary Apollo Creed, he sees a way for his man to go out on top. With little experience under his belt, and Rocky facing his own problems, Donnie struggles to embrace the legacy of his father while figuring out his own place in the world.<br />
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<a name='more'></a>What's in a name?<br />
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It's pretty rare for a franchise to reach its seventh entry, even more so when that seventh film comes a full four decades after the original. But with "Creed," both a sequel and spinoff to "Rocky," that's exactly what's happened. Forty years after we were introduced to the Italian Stallion, we're back with a film that's fresh and vital and yet somehow still entirely steeped in the history of the franchise.<br />
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The ghost of Apollo Creed looms large over this film in many ways, understandably, though Carl Weathers only appears in extremely brief archival footage. Instead, Donnie is desperate to separate himself from the Creed name, struggling with his sense of self due to all of his anger about his father and that legacy even though it's given him so much — including a surrogate mother whom he loves, a massive home, a nice car, etc.<br />
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What really cuts at Donnie is the idea that he might be a mistake. Michael B. Jordan plays that resentment and confusion well. More and more, people tell him he's his father's son, and he's torn between being revolted by that concept and embracing it as a manner of finding some peace for himself. He desperately wants to make his own way without using the Creed name to get ahead, but at every turn finds that it's the prism through with others will always view him.<br />
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It's eventually his relationship with "Uncle" Rocky that helps him realize that even with the Creed name and all it's given him, he can chart his own path. Rocky takes a back seat in this film, taking up the trainer role from Mickey (Burgess Meredith) and Apollo himself in earlier films. But that's not to mean that Rocky doesn't have his won arc in "Creed."<br />
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The film begins with Rocky having settled into his retirement, but not in a particularly good way. Rocky's basically given up. With the passing of his friend Paulie, he's got no one left in his life except a son he rarely speaks to. So "when something breaks, I ain't gonna fix it," he says. But Rocky comes back to life when he begins to form a real relationship with Donnie, and in each other they both find something to work for and live for.<br />
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The temptation in making a more modern, harder-edged version of "Rocky" would be to make Rocky himself darker and grittier. But while Rocky's late-life depression and health problems are a sad route for the character, Rocky himself is actually quite recognizable as the lovable Philly boxer we all love. He's the same simple, good-natured dude he's always been, which lends the film a positivity that these films have always thrived upon even when it dips into its saddest, lowest points.<br />
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I have to give props to Stallone himself. The man is definitely smarter than most people give him credit for, but an honest-to-god great acting performance from him is pretty damn rare. Rocky Balboa is obviously one of his most famous, beloved and revered creations, and rightfully so. While the previous film, "Rocky Balboa," seemed to exist mostly to trade on sheer nostalgia, "Creed" is, like its main character, more concerned with respecting that past while making its own name for itself. It's not content to let us feel things for Rocky simply because he's Rocky and we're expected to after six previous movies.<br />
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And Sylvester Stallone is on board with that, giving one of his better performances. Some of his scenes in the latter half of the film are quite effective — especially a scene where he lays bare his current, depressed philosophy to Donnie. </div>
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The last part of the casting triangle is Tessa Thompson as Bianca, Donnie's neighbor who is a singer at the beginning of a promising career. They quickly begin to fall for each other, and some effort is made to make Bianca an important part of Donnie's life, but her own agency wavers in and out. Early on, we learn that she has degenerative hearing loss, and that even though she has the voice to be a great singer, she'll eventually go deaf and that would mean the end of any musical career. But in the second half of this film, that's a detail that stops really mattering at all and she mostly just becomes Donnie's girlfriend. But Thompson gives a fine performance, and I think she's come a long way since playing one of the more annoying recurring characters on "Veronica Mars."</div>
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On a technical level, co-writer/director Ryan Coogler has made a confident, bristling film that even though it embraces so many of the familiar tropes and images of the "Rocky" franchise never feels tired or forced. More often than not, he instead uses those images to help set "Creed" apart. Donnie at first decides to train at Mickey's gym, but Rocky decides that's not what he needs, and so they move to a different gym in a harsher part of Philly. When the inevitable training montage comes up, Donnie's wearing the familiar gray sweatsuit but his circumstances are entirely different. Even the famous Rocky statue at the Philadelphia Museum of Art and its iconic steps serve different narrative and emotional ideas.<br />
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Of course, without good boxing, what's a "Rocky" film? (The glib answer to that question is, of course, "Rocky V," but I digress). And Coogler stages some mightily impressive sequences. Donnie's first fight is a marvel, the entirety of it in one long take that moves in and around the ring and the fighters. It's absolutely a stunning sequence. A deft mixture of cinematography, choreography, editing and sound design give the boxing sequences serious heft. Each lightning-fast punch, dodge and combo hit with incredible oomph. At one point in the climactic fight, Conlan slugs Donnie with a vicious right that hit the audience in our theater like a ton of bricks, eliciting audible gasps in response.<br />
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"Creed" brings respectability back to the "Rocky" franchise. With fine performances, solid scripting and crackling technical production, it's a fantastic revitalization of a storied franchise. Whether it leads to further sequels following Donnie Creed is anyone's guess, but taken on its own and as a rare seventh entry in a franchise, it's a winner.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06788052045631995191noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8357461209729991855.post-66745108403132103432015-11-22T17:55:00.001-08:002015-11-22T17:55:44.191-08:00"Spotlight" (2015)Starring Michael Keaton, Mark Ruffalo and Rachel McAdams<br />
Written by Tom McCarthy and Josh Singer<br />
Directed by Tom McCarthy<br />
Rated R — Language, mature themes<br />
Running Time: 128 Minutes<br />
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EwdCIpbTN5g">Trailer</a><br />
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In July 2001, a new editor came to the Boston Globe, Marty Baron (Liev Schreiber). Initially thinking he might need to make cuts on the Globe's special investigative team, called Spotlight, Baron instead decides to sic Spotlight on a story written about a catholic priest accused of molesting children. Spotlight, led by Walter "Robby" Robinson (Michael Keaton), starts to dig into the Globe's archives and instead finds the beginnings of a conspiracy within the church.<br />
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Robby's reporters, Mike Rezendes (Mark Ruffalo), Sacha Pfeiffer (Rachel McAdams) and Matt Carroll (Brian d'Arcy James) discover more victims and, astonishingly, more priests. But the team at the Globe, including Spotlight, Baron and assistant managing editor Ben Bradlee Jr. (John Slattery), faces opposition at every turn.<br />
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The Archdiocese of Boston is a powerful organization, and they're not about to let the Spotlight team break open a conspiracy they've been sweeping under the rug for decades.<br />
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<a name='more'></a>There are a lot of famous journalist characters in film and television, but at best these characters are over-romanticized and at worse they are an offense to the profession of journalism. And those films themselves are often full of bad journalism for the sake of a more dramatic or entertaining story.<br />
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"Spotlight," so wonderfully, is none of those things. It is a meticulous and accurate depiction of journalism that still feels fascinating and dramatic all the same. As someone who worked at a steadily-shrinking newspaper for the better part of a decade, I recognize a lot of the stuff going on here — and not also just because I lived in the Boston area when all the events of the film occurred.<br />
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Tom McCarthy directs with a steady, sure hand, slowly peeling back layer after layer of the story to lay everything bare. Everything on down to the film's dry wit is done in a simple, matter-of-fact manner that never manages to drain the drama or weight out of the film. Even the performances of the cast are grounded and without much exaggeration of any kind. While I'm sure that, like with other films based on true stories, certain shortcuts are made, it never feels that way.<br />
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Additionally, its representation of Boston itself and the people there is incredibly authentic, doing an even better job than this year's Whitey Bulger flick, "Black Mass" — especially when it comes to the accent.<br />
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But beyond just feeling authentic, the fact of the matter is that "Spotlight" tells a simple, powerful story in a simple, straightforward way. And it doesn't glorify anything along the way. It does not set up the Boston Globe as unassailable, and even takes the paper to task for not seeing what was happening far sooner, for ignoring all the warnings it had been given by lawyers and victims in the past. But when the time did come, it was through hard work and determination against a system that had been entrenched for decades, with roots in the very soul of a city.<br />
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The performances of the cast are uniformly excellent. Each of them feels real, and dedicated, even though we actually learn precious little about their personal lives outside of the job. We get just enough details to round them out, such as meeting Sacha Pfeiffer's very religious grandmother (which informs Pfeiffer's subplot in which she worries about how this scandal would affect her grandmother), and we learn that Matt Carroll has kids, and he's worried sick about them interacting with priests. But we always see them through the prism of the job, which fleshes them out but also keeps the film laser-focused on the story that's unfolding. Like everything else in the film, it's extremely efficient.<br />
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The supporting cast is magnificent as well. Stanley Tucci is excellent as Mitch Garabedian, a small-time lawyer representing dozens of molestation victims. Billy Crudup has a couple of really excellent scenes as another lawyer, one who gets backed into a wall when the Spotlight team presses him for info he's afraid to give. Members of the Archdiocese never play their roles as villainous, which helps considerably. Paul Guilfoyle, for example, doesn't overdo his role that's essentially as an enforcer for the Archdiocese but in the guise of a bigwig at Catholic Charities. Even Len Cariou's brief scene as Cardinal Law doesn't feel like a swipe or an attack.<br />
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The actors playing the victims have probably some of the toughest scenes because they're the ones that have to play the pain and the shame of grownups living with what happened to them. The film doesn't overdo these sequences, either, and there are two scenes in particular that stand out as some of the film's most powerful moments.<br />
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"Spotlight" is a phenomenal film, but almost deceptively so. It's so simple and so straightforward that it seems like it shouldn't be as good as it is — but it is. And you should absolutely go see it.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06788052045631995191noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8357461209729991855.post-75872448499273260882015-11-09T10:17:00.004-08:002015-11-09T10:17:50.181-08:00"Spectre" (2015)Starring Daniel Craig, Christoph Waltz and Lea Seydoux<br />
Written by John Logan, Neal Purvis, Robert Wade and Jez Butterworth<br />
Directed by Sam Mendes<br />
Rated PG-13 — Violence, language, some sexuality<br />
Running Time: 148 Minutes<br />
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LTDaET-JweU">Trailer</a><br />
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British superspy James Bond (Daniel Craig) causes an international incident in Mexico City when assassinating a terrorist without authorization from his superiors. Bond's actions couldn't have come at a worse time as M (Ralph Fiennes) is struggling to keep MI6 and its Double-O Section alive. It seems a new intelligence chief, Max Dinbergh, nicknamed C (Andrew Scott), has convinced the higher-ups that M's old-school spy section is outdated and outmoded and has managed to build a massive high-tech drone system and networked it with the intelligence communities of nine other countries. This, C says, will eliminate the need for men like Bond, who C believes is reckless.<br />
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But Bond, driven by a message from his past, can't let this one go. His investigation leads him to a secret meeting in Rome, where he runs afoul of another ghost from his past: Oberhauser (Christoph Waltz), leader of a powerful organization calling itself Spectre. Barely escaping with his life, Bond begins to realize that the conspiracy goes bigger and deeper than he ever expected. Stopping Spectre might take more from Bond than his past — it might mean his future as well.<br />
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<a name='more'></a>The 24th James Bond movie. Dang. That's pretty incredible. But how do you follow a blazing hit like "Skyfall"? That film was a massive, gorgeous surprise. With most of the same crew returning, especially director Sam Mendes, the film feels very much in the same vein and definitely wants to be a culmination of the Daniel Craig version of the series. While it offers a lot of closure to this batch of episodes, it doesn't have quite the same impact that "Skyfall" does.<br />
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In one respect, this movie probably couldn't be like it is without "Skyfall." One of the aims of that movie was to bring us back to a more traditional version of Bond by the end of it, and in that regard, "Spectre" runs with it — it's a lighter, funnier ride than "Skyfall," and even features a few of the more traditional Bond movie tropes.<br />
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Not the least of which is Spectre itself, which for decades was out of reach of Bond's producers thanks to a rights issue. There's that iconic, shadowy organization, a secret lair in the desert, a nigh-indestructible and mute henchman (Dave Bautista), an Aston Martin full of weapons and tricks...<br />
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And that both hurts and helps "Spectre" because it also means that it's more of a conventional Bond film, and, frankly, we've had decades worth of those already. It helps to view a lot of those tropes through the lens of "Skyfall," because "Spectre" also feels like these ideas have been pretty modernized.<br />
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Stepping back from "Skyfall" to give "Spectre" its own due, the film is exceptionally well made. Daniel Craig is still a fantastic Bond, and gets to be a little looser and have a bit more fun this time around. Sam Mendes directs some incredible sequences, not the least of which is the Mexico City opening. The film starts with a lengthy tracking shot that follows Bond through a Day of the Dead parade, into a hotel, back out of the hotel and across the rooftops as he tracks his target. It's one of the longest, most impressive single-shot scenes I've seen. A car chase through the deserted, late-night streets of Rome is gorgeous. A plane sequence in the mountains later is even better.<br />
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Monica Bellucci and Lea Seydoux are the requisite "Bond Girls" in this film, and both do splendid. Bellucci has the far smaller role as the widow of Bond's Mexico City target, who leads him to Spectre, which leads him to Seydoux's Madeleine Swann. Swann, the daughter of "Mr. White" (Jesper Christensen) from "Casino Royale" and "Quantum of Solace," is one of the better Bond girls. She's a more rounded character, one deeply conflicted and resentful of her father and the life he forced upon her. But in throwing in with Bond, she begins to peel back layers of both her father and herself, which makes her more interesting than a lot of the female characters in this series even if she ends up being a rather typical damsel in distress by the end.<br />
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"Spectre's" big attempt to tie everything in Bond's life together is perhaps too big of a stretch. It feels a bit forced and artificial that so much of Bond's life comes together here. The writers try really hard to justify it, but it's such an obvious retcon that it feels rather awkward. Christoph Waltz does a fine job as the villainous Oberhauser (though, c'mon, everyone knows where this story is going — hiding it didn't really work for <a href="http://benforreelz.blogspot.com/2013/05/star-trek-into-darkness-2013.html">Benedict Cumberbatch</a>, and the attempt is about as successful here). There's a scene between the two of them, one of the classic "the villain tortures Bond, gets only quips in reply" scenes that's actually quite fantastic. There's a great deal of information conveyed in this one scene, and it's capped off by one of the better nods to the old Bond continuity in the film. Waltz is obviously having a good time in this scene, perhaps more so than anywhere else he appears in the film. It's his moment to shine and he takes it.<br />
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So if "Spectre" isn't quite as good as "Skyfall," it's still plenty good. It may seem from reading this review that I was disappointed with the film, but the truth is that I'm not. There's a lot to love here for fans, from the usual gorgeously excessive property destruction and gorgeously excessive alcohol consumption, to expanded roles for M, Q and Moneypenny. Callbacks and homages to the older films abound, and a generally lighter tone helps things move along crisply despite a 148-minute running time.<br />
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See Also<br />
<a href="http://benforreelz.blogspot.com/2012/10/casino-royale-2006.html">Casino Royale (2006)</a><br />
<a href="http://benforreelz.blogspot.com/2012/10/quantum-of-solace-2008.html">Quantum of Solace (2008)</a><br />
<a href="http://benforreelz.blogspot.com/2012/11/skyfall-2012.html">Skyfall (2012)</a>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06788052045631995191noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8357461209729991855.post-40626148823935833522015-10-20T21:34:00.001-07:002015-10-20T21:34:44.021-07:00'Star Wars Rebels' - Season One (2014)Starring Taylor Gray, Freddie Prinze Jr. and Vanessa Marshall<br />
Created by Dave Filoni, Simon Kinberg and Carrie Beck<br />
Based on "Star Wars" created by George Lucas<br />
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xg5YN3LAGw4">Trailer</a><br />
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Fifteen years after the fall of the Republic, teenage orphan Ezra Bridger ekes out a living on the planet Lothal, stealing and scamming for food and collecting different stormtrooper helmets whenever possible. One day he attempts a bigger score, stealing a crate of unknown loot from some imperial couriers but runs afoul of another group trying to steal the same crate: point man Kanan (Freddie Prinze Jr.), pilot Hera (Vanessa Marshall), muscle Zeb (Steven Blum) and explosives expert Sabine (Tiya Sircar).<br />
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Ezra soon falls in with this gang of thieves aboard their ship, the <i>Ghost</i>, and discovers that there's more to them: they're actually rebels. More than that, Ezra discovers that Kanan is a former Jedi, and that he wants to train Ezra in the ways of the Force. But Ezra is used to being on his own, only having to think of himself. He doesn't understand what it means to be a part of a family, or to work toward a larger cause.<br />
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And he doesn't know that the crew of the <i>Ghost</i> is wanted by more than just the local Imperial authorities: The Inquisitor (Jason Isaacs) has been dispatched by Darth Vader (James Earl Jones, reprising his world-famous role from the films) to hunt down any remaining Jedi... and Kanan and Ezra have made it onto his radar.<br />
<a name='more'></a>I was a big fan of "Star Wars: Clone Wars," a lavishly animated series taking place between "Attack of the Clones" and "Revenge of the Sith" and managed to be better than all of the "Star Wars" prequels combined by leaps and bounds. It was sad, then, that with Lucasfilm's multibillion-dollar sale to Disney that "Clone Wars," produced by Warner Bros., ended up on the chopping block.<br />
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"Star Wars Rebels" picks up some fifteen years after "Revenge of the Sith," and, thankfully, has decided to pick up unfinished threads from "Clone Wars" while charting new prequel territory between "Sith" and the original "Star Wars" film.<br />
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The main problem with "Rebels" is that the quality of animation isn't as high as it was on "Clone Wars." This feels like a budget issue — while Lucasfilm and Warner Bros. seemed content to throw as much money at "Clone Wars," Disney seems a little stingier. This mostly rears its head in how many characters or ships the show has on screen at any given time. There are scenes that take place in what ought to be crowded marketplaces that look like a ghost town. It's also rare to see more than a half dozen stormtroopers or TIE fighters on screen at once, making the imperial threat seem... somewhat limited. "Rebels" feels small-scale not because it takes place mostly on one planet, but because the animation isn't ambitious enough.<br />
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The show manages to stage some impressive fights and battles in the latter half of the season, but the first half struggles. Even the editing feels slightly off, like shots last half a second too long and interrupt the flow of a scene.<br />
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But the writing makes up for the lacking animation in most respects. For one thing, the crew of the <i>Ghost</i> all have pretty excellent chemistry. More than once I was reminded of "Firefly" by the dynamics at play. Filoni and his writers have gotten much better at writing banter than they were in the early seasons of "Clone Wars," and there's a much warmer and friendlier atmosphere among the close-knit characters of "Rebels" than there was among the admittedly somewhat distant Jedi and Clone Trooper cast of the previous show.<br />
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A big bonus for "Rebels" is that it weaves its new original characters into the "Star Wars" tapestry by including characters and themes from other productions. Billy Dee Williams and James Earl Jones reprise their characters of Lando Calrissian and Darth Vader, respectively, while Frank Oz appears (sort of) as Yoda, and there's a surprise reveal of a popular and pivotal "Clone Wars" character in the season finale that opens up the potential in the show's second season to go farther and bigger.<br />
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"Star Wars Rebels" struggles through its first few episodes, and doesn't quite overcome the limitations of its own animation even when the stories improve in the latter half, but it still proves to be a fun and worthy entry in the "Star Wars" franchise — with promise of better things to come.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06788052045631995191noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8357461209729991855.post-84095774488066538152015-10-15T10:24:00.000-07:002015-10-15T10:36:56.581-07:00'Fear The Walking Dead' - Season One (2015)Starring Kim Dickens, Cliff Curtis and Frank Dillane<br />
Created by Robert Kirkman and Dave Erickson<br />
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WDxew5SguVw">Trailer</a><br />
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A sickness is spreading over the sprawling city of Los Angeles. High school guidance counselor Maddy Clark (Kim Dickens) and her boyfriend, English lit teacher Travis Manawa (Cliff Curtis), are having a spot of trouble. Maddy's son, Nick (Frank Dillane) is a heroin addict, and he's disappeared. The next they hear of him, he's in the hospital having been hit by a car. Nick tells a tale of waking up to see his girlfriend <i>eating</i> another addict in the abandoned church where they shoot up.<br />
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At the same time, one of Maddy's students tells her about a sickness sweeping the nation that everyone seems to be underestimating. He warns her that things are about to change for the worse, and Maddy's not sure he's making it up.<br />
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When chaos explodes in downtown, Travis and Maddy prepare to take their family out of the city. Standing between them and safety in the desert are rioters, the crumbling LA authority structure... and a growing army of the undead.<br />
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<a name='more'></a>For all its faults, AMC's "The Walking Dead" is one of my favorite shows. But it does have faults, some of them pretty major. For one thing, the show is almost totally incapable of paying off buildup after a string of excellent episodes. Its finales are almost universally limp.<br />
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So would its much-anticipated spinoff, "Fear The Walking Dead" suffer the same issues? Yeah, kinda.<br />
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Things start out well. The show's look and feel is rather different than its parent show in the first few episodes. Much effort is expended to create a sense of impending doom, confusion and dread. The flesh-eating undead are kept mostly off-screen for much of the season's six episodes. If I were to grade "Fear" just on tone, atmosphere and technical construction, it'd be a surefire winner.<br />
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Unfortunately, a TV series has to be more than that, and when it comes to plotting and characters, "Fear" struggles in much the same way its progenitor does. The first three episodes build rather wonderfully as the characters attempt to understand what's happening and make it through the rioting and discover that the dead are returning and aren't friendly.<br />
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But then, for reasons that aren't entirely clear, the show decides to jump ahead a week. Civilization has fallen and the cast is now stuck in a fenced community, "guarded" by corrupt military remnants. In the lead up to the premiere, producers for the show promised that it would be different from the original show and a "slow burn" showing how one family deals with the crumbling order around them. But then, three episodes into a six-episode season, it basically abandons that premise.<br />
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The three episodes that follow are pretty bog-standard "Walking Dead" fare, albeit with fewer zombies. The finale feels like a decent culmination, and finally gives viewers the massive crowds of undead the original show is famous for, but it doesn't particularly feel earned. It seems like we could have gotten there a different way that would have been more interesting than the "fence" episodes.<br />
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And then there's the iffy subject of, yes, teenage characters. These are definitely problematic. Sometimes, it works, sometimes it doesn't. Having one of them be a heroin addict is troublesome, mostly because the show handles his recovery inconsistently. In the first three episodes, Nick goes through serious withdrawal, but in the final three he sometimes is fine enough to do whatever and sometimes is curled up vomiting. I'm no expert, but that came across as odd to me.<br />
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The other two teens, Maddy's daughter Alicia (Alycia Debnam-Carey) and Travis' son Chris (Lorenzo James Henrie) have smaller roles, but unfortunately they're the ones that fall into the more typical teenager characters where they kinda do stupid shit that makes you want to scream at the TV. In a six-episode season, they don't get too many occasions to do this, which is nice, but that also sort of means that when they do, it stands out more. A major subplot in the second and third episodes involves Travis attempting to reach Chris in the midst of an LA riot, but the kid keeps shouting about "doing something important" while shots are going off and cars are being flipped and his dad is pleading with him to leave.<br />
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Also problematically, the show introduces two black characters in the first episode, reveals that one of them is a shady drug dealer and immediately kills them off. This is a problem the original show has rather famously struggled with, and "Fear" doesn't particularly set itself apart there, either.<br />
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The first season of "Fear The Walking Dead" is... okay. It didn't immediately grab me the way the original did, but the first three episodes build well before the show stumbles in its second half. Pacing issues, too-familiar subplots and the occasionally aggravating teenager derail a show that has potential but struggles to justify its own existence.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06788052045631995191noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8357461209729991855.post-87636146911813723652015-09-20T11:06:00.000-07:002015-09-20T11:06:42.693-07:00"Black Mass" (2015)Starring Johnny Depp, Joel Edgerton and Benedict Cumberbatch<br />
Written by Jez Butterworth and Mark Mallouk<br />
Directed by Scott Cooper<br />
Rated R — Violence, language<br />
Running Time: 122 Minutes<br />
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CE3e3hGF2jc">Trailer</a><br />
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In 1975, FBI Special Agent John Connolly (Joel Edgerton) moves back to his hometown in South Boston and joins an anti-mafia task force whose sole purpose is to bring down the Italian crime families controlling the North End. Connolly, realizing that standard FBI procedure isn't working, comes up with a bold plan: strike a deal with the Italians' biggest rival, Southie's Winter Hill Gang. Leading the gang is a cold-hearted bastard named Jimmy "Whitey" Bulger, whom Connolly knew as a kid. But how to reach him?<br />
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Bulger's younger brother, Billy, is now a state senator, and puts Connolly in touch with Jimmy. And a devil's deal is born. Over the next twenty years, Bulger rises to power in Boston and even expands his business into Miami. He's responsible for drugs and murders and who knows what else in Boston. And all the while, Connolly protects him from within the FBI, trying to claim that the good they're doing outweighs the evils of letting "Whitey" run roughshod over the city.<br />
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Connolly's mistake will ruin careers, end lives and leave a black mark on the FBI for decades to come.<br />
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<a name='more'></a>In 2014, before moving to the small community of Brooklyn, New York, I worked for a small newspaper in the city of Lynn, Massachusetts. For several weeks, the area surrounding our office was transformed into various locations standing in for South Boston, including a police station, a Red Line T stop and the route of a 1981 St. Patrick's Day Parade.<br />
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Johnny Depp's Whitey Bulger movie was coming to town. When we asked one of the location managers why they chose Lynn to stand in for Southie, we were told it was because Lynn had done such a great job maintaining its 1970s aesthetic. Ouch.<br />
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But, it was, in a word, fascinating.<br />
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That's the same word I can use to describe "Black Mass" as a whole. It's fascinating. Is it entertaining? From start to finish. Is it impeccably produced? For sure. Is it full of amazing performances? Definitely.<br />
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Is it <i>good</i>? That's a harder question to answer. Part of the problem is that while the film sticks to exploring the years between 1975 when Bulger begins his "alliance" with Connolly to 1995 when he flees Boston, that mostly means there's very little payoff for much of what we're watching. Additionally, the script glosses over important developments and instead presents them as quick exposition. It feels like the filmmakers got so involved in just letting these actors get up on screen and inhabit their characters that they forgot they were supposed to be telling a story.<br />
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A lot happens in "Black Mass," but it's sort of difficult to parse what it all means. Things just move along until Bulger is outed by the Boston Globe, and then he skips town. The ultimate fates of the other characters are shown to us via on-screen text. It's an abrupt and unsatisfactory ending, especially since there's actually another two decades worth of story — some of which was actually filmed. Actress Sienna Miller shot scenes as Bulger's longtime girlfriend Catherine Greig, but all of those scenes (and, indeed any mention of Greig whatsoever) are missing from the film. That leaves a huge and important chunk of Bulger's story on the cutting room floor, and in a narrative sense, kind of hobbles his character.<br />
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In the early part of the film, there are several scenes involving Bulger's ex-girlfriend Lindsey Cyr (Dakota Johnson) and their son that show a fascinating (that word again) other side to Bulger as a father and family man... in his own way. A tiny bit of human emotion sneaks through his cold exterior, but even his interactions with his own son have a weird darkness to them that's utterly engrossing. But any sense of Bulger as a complex person disappears in the second half of the film, and he's just pure gangster. It makes him almost more of a force of nature than a man, like the shark in "Jaws" or Heath Ledger's Joker in "The Dark Knight." But it's the result of the film losing something rather than seeming to be by design. The script posits that this is on purpose, that "Jimmy was never the same" after the deaths of his mother and his son, but the existence of Greig in the real-life story puts another spin on it that we don't get to see here.<br />
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Additionally, the FBI's discovery that Bulger has been playing them is handled in an abrupt and abbreviated manner, as though the filmmakers said, "Oh, crap, we have to end this" and just ended it. The film is positively littered with moments like that, where the plot surges forward because it has to and we realize that while we love all the scenes we just watched, they didn't really mean all that much.<br />
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Johnny Depp is fantastic as Bulger. He gives one of the most menacing gangster performances in a long time. In one scene, under the guise of concern for Connolly's wife Marianne (Julianne Nicholson), Bulger puts his hand on her neck and growls, "I don't feel any swollen glands there." It's a positively horrifying moment, with Depp coldly intoning, "It'd be a fuckin' tragedy if anything happened to you" as he heads back downstairs. And the film is loaded with incredibly disturbing moments like this. It reminds us that while Depp has spent the last decade or so disappearing into various cartoon characters, the reason he's able to do so is because he's a master at letting the mask take him somewhere.<br />
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The rest of the cast is all up for it, too. If there's anyone who's up to standing next to Depp in this one, it's Joel Edgerton, whose Connolly is basically perfect. In fact, that's one thing I have to say straight out: I love "The Departed," but the accents in that movie are atrocious. "Black Mass" on the other hand, fares much better. Even British Benedict Cumberbatch, standing probably ten inches taller than the real Billy Bulger, nails it. (Related side note, director Scott Cooper doesn't have Martin Scorsese's ear for period rock music... but then, who does?)<br />
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Other members of Bulger's gang, including Steve "The Rifleman" Flemmi (Rory Cochrane) and Kevin Weeks (a chubbed-up Jesse Plemmons, looking for all the world like a beat-to-shit Matt Damon with marbles in his mouth) have smaller roles but are just as good. We get to see these two men give testimony to the FBI after their arrests, mostly shot in tight closeup, which is an effect that works really well.<br />
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If only it felt more focused in the progression of its story and giving us a fuller and more satisfying ending, and a fuller and more satisfying arc for Bulger, "Black Mass" would be a surefire winner. As is, it's mostly there, but stumbles across the finish line. The sometimes haphazard-feeling script fails the amazing performances that are clearly holding it up.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06788052045631995191noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8357461209729991855.post-45645108215370245682015-09-15T10:30:00.000-07:002015-09-15T10:30:22.541-07:00"Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome" (1985)Starring Mel Gibson, Tina Turner and Angelo Rossito<br />
Written by George Miller and Terry Hayes<br />
Directed by George Miller and George Ogilvie<br />
Rated PG-13: Violence, language<br />
Running Time: 107 Minutes<br />
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uouqnng_Xro">Trailer</a><br />
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"Mad" Max Rockatansky wanders the wasteland alone in a wagon pulled by camels that contains all of his possessions. When a scavenger (Bruce Spence) and his son ambush him and steal all of his stuff, Max tracks them to Bartertown, a small city ruled by Auntie Entity (Tina Turner) on the surface. Bartertown is powered by methane culled from pig feces, and the engineer in charge of it all in the underworld is a duo named Master Blaster — the diminutive Master (Angelo Rossito) and his hulking, silent bodyguard Blaster (Paul Larsson).<br />
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In exchange for the return of all of his property, Max agrees to engineer a fight against Blaster to help Auntie Entity solidify her control over the entirety of Bartertown once and for all. But once he enters the Thunderdome, a gladiatorial arena cage where "two men enter, one man leaves" and there are no rules, he discovers that Master Blaster is actually the benevolent one and Auntie Entity the villain.<br />
<a name='more'></a>I don't really know what's going on in this movie. George Miller's best friend apparently died during preproduction, so a second director, George Ogilvie, was brought in to help carry the load. I'm not sure if that's what's responsible for the mess this movie is, but it seems likely enough.<br />
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For one thing, there's an extended sequence in the middle where Max is exiled into the desert and comes across a camp of children who had been abandoned after the apocalypse by the an airline pilot who was supposed to have been flying them to safety. It seems to have almost nothing to do with anything other than forcibly giving Max a reason to return to Bartertown after he gets kicked out.<br />
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But in general, the problems with "Beyond Thunderdome" are that it's incredibly boring and that the whole thing feels really forced. After the wonderful "Road Warrior," this feels like a movie no one was really invested in... like at all. Mel Gibson doesn't seem as "mad" as Max anymore, and, saddled with his terrible haircut, doesn't really do much in this movie other than get into a fight that he barely wins and then he rides on a train.<br />
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Seriously. I only just watched the movie and I'm hard pressed to think of more than just the two action sequences in this movie. The ending wants to repeat the success of the vehicular joy that was the third act of "Road Warrior," but changes things up by putting Max, Master and some children on a train being chased by Auntie Entity's enforcers. The sequence itself isn't poorly put together save for one brief bit involving Ironbar (Angry Anderson) hanging off the side and trying to evade various obstacles whipping by on a bridge. That part is just... bad. But when you're watching the movie and you see all those cars roaring across the desert, you think that finally we're getting to the good stuff and we just never really do.<br />
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The Thunderdome fight itself feels too comical for its own good. Max and Blaster are put in bungee harnesses so they can leap up to the top of the dome and collect weapons hanging there, but it mostly just makes it look like the two are kids throwing themselves awkwardly around a bouncy house.<br />
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Tina Turner makes an effective villain if only because she's a bit of a larger-than-life presence and she's clearly enjoying chewing the scenery. But that's about it. "Beyond Thunderdome" is a tired, nonsensical film that's not even bad in a good way. It's just boring. The subplot about the kids feels like a completely different movie and the PG-13 nature of it all makes it feel dumbed down, like one of the many pretenders to the post-apocalyptic throne that its predecessors spawned.<br />
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After watching this one, there's no wonder it took nearly thirty years for another "Mad Max" film to make it to theaters. And yet... somehow this thing has an 81 percent positive rating on Rotten Tomatoes, with people praising the action and acting. I find myself wondering if I watched the same movie as some of these critics. Certainly, I'm aware that there's a division in the fandom. Obviously, I'm on the side that finds "Beyond Thunderdome" a tedious bore of a film.<br />
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Thank god for "Fury Road."<br />
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See Also<br />
<a href="http://benforreelz.blogspot.com/2015/09/mad-max-1979.html" target="_blank">"Mad Max"</a><br />
<a href="http://benforreelz.blogspot.com/2015/09/mad-max-2-road-warrior-1981.html">"Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior"</a><br />
<a href="http://benforreelz.blogspot.com/2015/05/mad-max-fury-road-2015.html"><span id="goog_1904191551"></span>"Mad Max: Fury Road"<span id="goog_1904191552"></span></a>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06788052045631995191noreply@blogger.com0