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Movies

Doctor Strange (2016) a (mildly) belated review

When I was very young I was a voracious reader.  Almost any book and comic I got my hands on I would read.  In time the first “adult” book I read, a meaty 500+ pager, turned out to be Clive Cussler’s Vixen 03.  I was entranced by the book’s cover and, to this day, still love the image…

Related image

The book, my younger self thought after reading it, was terrific.  So impressed was I with it I quickly looked up and read all the other Clive Cussler books available out there, which at the time amounted to only four, including the also terrific Raise The Titanic!

As the years passed and Mr. Cussler released more books, I read them as well.  However, after a while I came to realize that every one of his books post-Raise The Titanic! were curiously similar, plot-wise.  It was as if Mr. Cussler hit upon a successful formula and was determined to repeat it…over and over and over again.

Sometime into the 1980’s I gave up on Mr. Cussler’s novels and this was due completely to that repetition.  Mr. Cussler (and his various co-writers) have continued making books up to today and I honestly have no idea if he continues to present the same general plots (I would hope not), but the damage was done and I completely lost interest in reading any of the man’s works.

When Doctor Strange came out last year, I was curious to see it.  I like actor Benedict Cumberbatch, who plays the good Doctor, and have found the Marvel movies, at least until roughly last year, to be by and large pleasant entertainment even as the more I saw of them, the more I realized they were, like Clive Cussler and his novels, works that followed a certain formula.

(There is one big exception, the wonderful, and I would argue best Marvel film, Captain America: Winter Soldier)

Worse, many reviews of Doctor Strange released concurrently with its release noted the film was essentially a magic themed remake of the film that started the whole Marvel movie industry rolling, the original Iron Man.

As good as Iron Man was, that film’s fingerprints have indeed been all over just about every Marvel film since.  Robert Downey Jr. was terrific as Tony Stark, the troubled, arrogant, and brilliant head of his self-named company who, thanks to a personal misfortune and a near death experience (his heart is very weak), devises the Iron Man armor and essentially makes himself a hero.  But this hero, unlike others on the screen to that point, retained his cockiness and glib attitude even in the face of death.  And, I repeat, Robert Downey Jr. was terrific in the role.

Unfortunately, not everyone fits that type of role as well.

Subsequent Marvel films have featured the “glib” hero in various stages, even if they don’t have the same arrogance.  It seems with every new Marvel film released, we have heroes -and villains!- offering jokes in the middle of what should be life and death situations.  Sometimes this works but, increasingly, it doesn’t.  At least not for me.

I was not blown away by Captain America: Civil War, though in my original review (you can read it here) I thought it was an enjoyable enough confection whose main problems lay in too many characters running around and too broad -and incomprehensible- a plot.  My opinion of the film, I must say, has taken a bit of a downturn since that original review.  While I still think the airport fight was good and Robert Downey Jr.’s meeting with Aunt May was fun, today I feel the film was more of a wiff than a success.  The very best films are those you are willing to come back to and see again and I seriously doubt I’ll ever watch CA:CW again.

With Doctor Strange, I hoped for the best but, frankly and based on those reviews I mentioned, anticipated the worst.  I feared the critics were right and the film would indeed be Magic Iron Man and I’d turn into my younger self and decide I’d had enough of the Marvel movie universe and their repetitive nature.

Doctor Strange starts with Kaecilius (Mads Mikkelsen, sadly underused), breaking into an ancient library, killing the man in charge of securing it, and stealing pages from an ancient tome.  He is then pursed by a mysterious figure who, we find, is the Ancient One (Tilda Swinton, easily the film’s best element).  Despite the Ancient One’s pursuit, Kaecilius nonetheless gets away and we then cut to…

Doctor Stephen Strange, neurosurgeon/surgeon extraordinaire.  The Iron Man comparisons are apt as he is glib, ultra-wealthy, arrogant, and, shortly after we’re introduced to him, has a life changing accident which destroys his hands and, therefore, wipes out his ability to be a surgeon.

His girlfriend, Christine Palmer (Rachel McAdams, truly and sadly wasted in a thankless role) tries to make Dr. Strange see that his life isn’t over but the arrogant and bitter man will not listen to her.  He chases her away while spending all his remaining money on experimental procedures to try to fix his hands.

While in rehab, Dr. Strange hears the story of a man who overcame what should have been paralysis and meets up with him.  The man tells Dr. Strange of a trip he made to the orient and Dr. Strange follows the man’s path, eventually coming upon the Ancient One and her/his (I’m not sure what his/her sex is supposed to be) magic arts study group.

It is there that the skeptical Stephen Strange gains knowledge of the magic arts and not a moment too soon as Kaecilius -conveniently- has waited all this time and politely allowed Dr. Strange to become reasonably proficient in the magic arts before making his move and attempting to destroy Earth.

I’ll get to the bottom line here: I didn’t like Doctor Strange all that much even as I’ll acknowledge it is a perfectly acceptable Marvel film and far from the stable’s worst (I know I’m in a very small minority here, but I really didn’t like Guardians of the Galaxy and feel it is easily the worst of the Marvel films).

The problem with Doctor Strange winds up being similar to the problem I had with the books of Clive Cussler.  I’ve seen this stuff before and, while there are new wrinkles here and there, the repetition is becoming tiresome.

Worse, though, is that the film never engages as much as one would hope.  The direction and editing never give us any big rush or sense of breathless action. The effects, good as they are, also become repetitious after a while.

As good as Robert Downey Jr. was/is at playing the Tony Stark role, even a great actor like Benedict Cumberbatch looks a bit lost trying to emulate that glib/arrogant-yet-funny/heroic type.  The others around him with one notable exception don’t really contribute all that much either.  Chiwetel Ejiofor is only OK as Mordo and his character’s change in the last minutes of the film feels like a plot contrivance rather than something his character logically earns.  I’ve already noted that I felt Rachel McAdams was wasted and Mads Mikkelsen was also underused and presented in a silly way.  He too engages in the glib/”funny” dialogue in inappropriate moments and this further destroys whatever threat levels we should have to the confrontations between Strange and he.

The big exception, as mentioned in the previous paragraph, is Tilda Swinton’s Ancient One.  She’s just enigmatic and stern enough to be intriguing but, when all is said and done, she’s in the film for no more than perhaps 15 minutes.  Nonetheless, I enjoyed just about every scene she was in and it says a lot that I would have rather seen a film about her/him than Dr. Strange!

In the end, while Doctor Strange isn’t a total disaster, it was just…there.  It was only okay.  Perhaps a little above mediocre.

Now that I’ve seen it, I seriously doubt I’ll ever bother watching it again.

Movies

Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence (2004) a (very) belated review

With the upcoming release of the Scarlett Johansson live action Ghost in the Shell, I admit to having gotten curious to revisit what I could of the original series.

I picked up the three new trade hardbacks reprinting the comic books and found them…ok.  The first book was the best but even that one, alas, didn’t impress me here and now as much as it probably would have when it was first released.  The original 1995 animated Ghost in the Shell movie, likewise, was recently revisited by me and while I enjoyed the film, I was surprised by its non-ending (you can read my full review here).  It was almost like the movie was a prologue to a longer, more involved story, one that I suppose came with 2004’s Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence.

While I enjoyed the original Ghost in the Shell animated film, I must admit its sequel left me…weary.

The story, what there is of it, involves robots that are turning on their masters and killing them, and the investigation lead by Batô, the original cyborg partner of the Major (the character Scarlett Johansson plays in the new movie), and Togusa (also a character from the original film) into those killings.

Their partnership, in true movie form, is an uncomfortable one, with the more “human” Togusa worrying about his wife and child and the far less emotional Batô willing to push things as far as needed to solve the case.  He’s also not afraid of violence.

I’ll be blunt here: I didn’t like the film.

While its premise was intriguing enough, the film, to me, had difficulties setting a tone and sticking with it.  What should have been a good action/adventure with some intriguing questions about humanity in the age of cybernetics instead became too often too dull with those ruminations.  Further, it was so clear, even from the opening minutes, that (SPOILER, I suppose) the Major would make a re-appearance after her “disappearance” in the original film that this proved to be the only thing keeping me watching.

As a character Batô isn’t bad, but in the first film he worked because he was a secondary character and our focus was on the enigmatic Major.  In this film, Batô is the main character and his emotionlessness becomes…dull.

Indeed, there was only one sequence in the film that I found incredibly enjoyable, and that was Batô and Togusa’s visit to a Yakuza den.  It was action filled and, especially, hilarious in the set-up and payoff.

I just wish the rest of the film had that vibe.

Visually, this film, like the original Ghost in the Shell, is very pretty, though some of the computer generated images show their age.  When the film was released in 2004, I suspect the computer graphics were quite state of the art but in terms of computer graphics 2004 is a very, very long time ago and it shows.

Anyway, if you liked the original animated Ghost in the Shell and are curious to see the story’s continuation, you should probably check out Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence, if only to see where things go.

Just tamper down your hopes.  The sequel, while enjoyable in spurts, doesn’t do so as a whole.

Movies

Morgan (2016) a (mildly) belated review

I’ve noted before that as far as my opinion on movies are concerned, I’ve mellowed out considerably and give features far more of the benefit of the doubt than before.

But there are limits to this and I present to you Example A: Morgan.  Here’s the movie’s trailer…

Directed by Luke Scott, son of Blade Runner/Alien director Ridley Scott, Morgan feels like an attempt to tread in Blade Runner territory with more than a little of Frankenstein.  Perhaps the movie was meant to be a Blade Runner prequel?

Anyway, Morgan (Anya Taylor-Joy) is an artificial creation housed in a remote forest lab.  She is five years old though looks to be in her later teens and, as the movie opens, she viciously attacks Dr. Kathy Grieff (Jennifer Jason Leigh, completely wasted in a small cameo role).  The attack, which results in Dr. Grieff losing one eye, is in turn investigated by the corporation funding the Morgan “project”.

Sent in to check the status of the scientific group, Morgan, and the viability of the project itself is Corporate clean-up specialist Lee Weathers (Kate Mara, sadly one note and morose throughout this film).

She begins her investigation and meets the various people in this scientific community, almost all of whom, including Dr. Grieff, have strong positive feelings toward Morgan and try to convince Weathers that Morgan’s attack was an anomaly and that she deserves a second chance.

Ok.

So we have Weathers meet up with the group and, eventually, Morgan herself.  Since the attack, Morgan has been placed in isolation and behind a thick glass.  Morgan states she is sorry for the attack and all and Weathers takes it in unemotionally (as she does everything else) and things are oh-so-serious and…dull.

And then, stupidly (there are an awful lot of stupid things being done by supposedly smart people here), the corporation brings in Dr. Alan Shapiro (Paul Giamatti, acting set to “overkill”) to interview Morgan and see just how stable she is.

He does this by essentially yelling he’s got the power to kill her and what the hell is she going to do about it?!

Now, can you just guess what Morgan will do about it?

The movie’s second act, as if you haven’t guessed it yet, is Morgan going apeshit on those she is convinced are out to kill her (some are, most are not).  This leads to the movie’s climax and a “twist” ending that does almost nothing for the film and an epilogue featuring Brian Cox who explains everything that’s just happened and…

…ugh.

Morgan, if you haven’t guessed it yet, is to me an almost complete bust.  The movie features a lackluster, all-too-simple and all-too-familiar plot that begs for a much more robust, in-your-face and perhaps even campy presentation.  We need blood and guts and craziness but instead are offered a far too-mannered, too-Masterpiece Theater presentation and this, unfortunately, makes the movie’s plot problems all the more evident.

A real disappointment.

Movies

Broken Arrow (1996) a (very) belated review

Waaaaay back in the early 1990’s I, along with many other movie geeks, discovered the works of director John Woo.  Most specifically for me were two movie he made starring ultra-cool Chow Yun-Fat: 1989’s The Killer and 1992’s Hard Boiled.  The later film, according to Mr. Woo himself and if memory serves, was intended to be not just a great action film but a calling card to Hollywood that Mr. Woo was not only a top-tier action director, but that he was willing and able to make the leap to American films.

This bravura sequence from Hard Boiled, shot mostly in one take (if you look hard, there is one clear break), is one of the film’s highlights:

Hollywood, needless to say, took notice.

The very next year, in 1993, Mr. Woo’s first American film, Hard Target, featuring Jean-Claude Van Damme, was released.  The movie was, to me, a disappointment.  It was a good Jean-Claude Van Damme film, perhaps his best, but considering what Mr. Woo released the previous years, it felt like a step down.  (NOTE: Mr. Woo’s original version of the film was cut for theatrical release.  You can read more about what was changed/taken out of that version here)

It would be three years and not until 1996 that Mr. Woo’s next Hollywood film was released and that was the John Travolta and Christian Slater action-fest Broken Arrow.

I recall seeing that film back when it was released and found it a far better film than Hard Target yet was still disappointed because I expected so much more from the man behind the camera.

Mr. Woo would go on to make a handful of other films for Hollywood, including Face/Off, Mission: Impossible II, Windtalkers, and Paycheck, before heading back to more familiar ground -and Hong Kong- to continue his career.

Now, looking back at Mr. Woo’s Hollywood years, one can’t help but feel this once very exciting director’s career stalled or, sadly, took a big step backwards during this time period.  Today, Mission Impossible II is looked at as one of the lesser MI films.  Paycheck, to  many (including me) was an outright terrible film and one of the reasons Ben Affleck’s career nosedived after a promising beginning.

So while I harbored good feelings toward Mr. Woo’s earlier works, there was little doubt I felt either ambivalent or bad feelings regarding his Hollywood career.

Today, that’s very far in the past and when I found Broken Arrow playing on cable yesterday, I decided after all these years to give it another try.

Wouldn’t you know it, I found the film far more enjoyable than I remembered?

I think part of the reason is those old heightened expectations I had of Mr. Woo’s then-nascent Hollywood career were long gone and I watched Broken Arrow with far fewer -indeed, no- expectations, and the movie benefited tremendously without them.

The movie concerns Vic Deakins (John Travolta, looking very young, spry, and more than a little out of his freaking mind) hijacking two nuclear missiles from a bomber he and his co-pilot, Riley Hale (Christian Slater), were transporting.  As it turns out, Deakins was acting alone and intended to kill Riley during the hijacking.

Riley, however, survives and the movie becomes a cat-and-mouse chase between Deakins and his band of very bad-guys versus Riley and his eventual companion, Park Cop Terry Charmichael (Samantha Mathis), as they try to thwart Deakins and the very deadly missiles he intends to use to extort big money from the U.S. Government.

Broken Arrow, viewed today, is a surprisingly old-fashioned (I DO NOT say that as a slight!) good-guy versus bad-guy feature.  The bad-guys are really bad and the good guys are clean-cut and very good.  The bad guys will play dirty and snarl and curse while the good guys will take what’s given and not back down…even if the odds are against them.  The action sequences, while not quite as good as Mr. Woo’s greatest Hong Kong hits, are nonetheless exciting and entertaining and deliver the thrills.

After the film was done I couldn’t help but feel I’d been too harsh on Mr. Woo way back then and most certainly regarding this film.  I also wondered if maybe it was time to give at least some of his other Hollywood features a second chance.

I’m looking at you, Hard Target and Face/Off.

Broken Arrow is recommended…and further reviews of Mr. Woo’s works may be coming!

I present the movie’s trailer below but caution those who haven’t seen the film yet that they may want to before seeing this trailer.  It gives away an awful lot of plot!

Movies

Don’t Breathe (2016) a (mildly) belated review

One of 2016’s bigger hits was the suspense/horror movie Don’t Breathe.  Here’s one of the movie’s trailers…

The movie’s plot is, essentially, a thematic inversion of the 1967 Audrey Hepburn/Alan Arkin film Wait Until Dark.  Here’s the trailer for that film…

In Wait Until Dark, a trio of thieves enter Audrey Hepburn’s character’s home and, eventually, terrorize her as they seek heroine they are certain is hidden within the place.

In Don’t Breathe Rocky (Jane Levy), her sleazy boyfriend “Money” (Daniel Zovatto), and the clean cut/not-so-secretly-pining-for-Rocky Alex (Dylan Minnette) form the trio of thieves who use information Alex gets from his father’s security company to break into homes, disarm their alarms, and steal whatever items they can get their hands on.

It turns out Rocky has a very good reason for engaging in these activities: She lives in a highly dysfunctional home with her very sleazy mother and much younger sister.  She hopes to get enough money to be able to flee this hellish house with her young sister.

So while her methods are bad, her goal is noble.

When the trio hear about a man, as it turns out a Blind Man (Stephen Lang, absolutely terrific here), who may have as much as $300,000 hidden away in his home in a deserted slum within Detroit, they figure they’ve found the right mark and haul that can finally get them out of their individual bad situations.

Unlike Audrey Hepburn’s character in Wait Until Dark, however, Stephen Lang’s Blind Man turns out to be far from helpless…or, for that matter, good.  There be terrible secrets hiding within his house and our “heroes”, or perhaps more appropriately “anti-heroes”, are about to enter a very dark (no pun intended) world from which they may not escape from…alive.

Don’t Breathe was made by the same team, and features the same star, Jane Levy, of 2013’s Evil Dead remake, a film that, frankly, I didn’t much like (you can read my review of that film here).  Unlike the bloody and gore filled Evil Dead, Don’t Breathe uses very little actual blood and almost no gore in telling its story.  Instead, this movie relies on building tension through the strength of the actors and situations they are in to convey the terror of their situation.  While I’m not adverse to gore in films (I loved the original Evil Dead films and the first two were filled with gore!), this movie benefits tremendously from the decision to forego the bloody stuff and focus on situational tension.

Before I go, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the fact that those who faulted the film felt its second act and the big reveal regarding what the Blind Man was up to in his decrepit house was a little too much.  Frankly, I can’t argue against those who felt these things were unnecessary.  Indeed, these elements could have been cut out and the film and we therefore might have had a leaner and meaner feature.  However, these revelations didn’t bother me as much as it did some others.

In the end, Don’t Breathe is an easy recommendation to all fans of good tension/horror films.

Movies

Criminal (2016) a (mildly) belated review

Several years ago I saw and reviewed Mission: Impossible Ghost Protocol (2011) (you can read the full review here) and noted the following:

Have you ever seen a film that, upon exiting the theaters, you could tell it underwent some major revisions in the story it was trying to tell?

In the case of MIGP, if felt to me the film took a major deviation in its climax and I strongly suspect (still do!) the movie’s bad guys were intended to be Josh Holloway’s Hanaway (a character who apparently dies in the opening act…a strange choice to have a fairly recognizable actor like Mr. Holloway in what amounts to little more than a cameo role) and his girlfriend/fellow agent, Paula Patton’s Jane.

The film, IMHO, leads to this revelation up to the sequence in the very tall building in Dubai.  It was there I was absolutely certain Hanaway would be revealed as not dead and Jane, seemingly distraught at the death of her boyfriend and wanting revenge, was really a double agent working alongside him.

For whatever reason the film’s makers decided not to go there and, as I explained in my review, the movie’s climax was hurt (but, to be fair, not fatally) by this change.  I suspect MIGP would have been far better/shocking -and made more sense- had they gone that way.

I had similar feelings, though on a smaller scale, with the movie Criminal.  The film was an entertaining action/thriller with a small yet significant sci-fi element whose use reminded me a little of the John Woo directed, John Travolta/Nicholas Cage starring Face/Off.

The movie opens with Bill Pope (Ryan Reynolds) in the process of doing …something… in London.  We know he’s on the run and avoiding some suspicious people who are after him.  He gets a bag full of money and a passport and, we find, is not only being chased by some dubious characters but also tracked by a CIA office run by Quaker Wells (Gary Oldman).  Wells is frantic to figure out where Pope is going and provide him protection.

While fleeing Pope manages to call his wife Jill (Gal Gadot) for what will turn out to be the last time he speaks with her…ever.  Not long afterwards Pope is captured by the people pursuing him but not before hiding the money he got.  Despite being tortured, Pope refuses to tell the bad guys what they want to know.  By the time the CIA finds him, he’s already dead.

Whatever Pope was up to was big league stuff and the CIA, desperate to figure out what exactly he was up to before he died, contact Dr. Franks (Tommy Lee Jones).  Dr. Franks is working on a way of transferring the memories of one animal into another.  The CIA tasks him with transferring the memories of the deceased Bill Pope into someone else so they can figure out what he was up to before he was killed.

Enter Jerico Stewart (Kevin Costner), a psychopathic -and imprisoned- killer who had severe brain trauma as a child and cannot feel or distinguish emotions or right versus wrong.  His frontal lobe never developed due to this brain trauma and therefore he is the one, the only subject which Dr. Franks feels may be successfully used to transfer Pope’s memories and find the information the CIA is so desperate to get.

All the while, the clock is ticking…

I won’t go into too many more SPOILERS and please note what I’ve written above occurs in the movie’s first fifteen or so minutes.

Suffice to say Criminal centers around the psychopathic Jerico as he struggles with Pope’s emerging memories…all while the villains are closing in.

Criminal is a pretty good action film, IMHO, that could have been even better had the script been tightened down a lot more (You knew I was going to get back to that Mission: Impossible Ghost Protocol stuff eventually, right?).

The fact is that the movie’s opening minutes are far more confusing than they should be.  For whatever reason Pope’s mission was kept under wraps until later in the film and this was a mistake.  They could have told audiences just how important the mission was right off the bat and that would have made us care more about Pope and, later, Jerico.

When Jerico is brought in, there is a choppiness here as well, as if parts of the script were tossed in favor of keeping the movie’s runtime reasonable (the movie nonetheless clocks in just shy of 2 hours).  We quickly hurry through introductions to Dr. Franks and Jerico so we can (also very quickly) get him to England and then out on his own.

Despite the choppiness, the film settles down and, to its great credit, Kevin Costner is quite good in the central role of Jerico.  He is something of a Frankenstein monster, gruff and confused yet slowly -and sometimes angrily- reacting to the humanity that is starting to spread for the first time into his system.

The movie features an astonishingly large cast of recognizable actors, many of whom, amusingly enough, were previously featured in comic book or sci-fi fantasy type films.  Let’s see now: Kevin Costner/Waterworld & The Postman, Man of Steel/Batman v Superman, Gary Oldman/Commissioner Gordon in Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy, Tommy Lee Jones/Two-Face in Batman Forever, Gal Gadot/Wonder Woman, Ryan Reynolds/Green Lantern & Deadpool, and, finally Alice Eve/Star Trek.

I point out Alice Eve last and here, again, I get the feeling her character’s place in the movie as released is a good example of what had to be major script changes.  Alice Eve’s character, Marta Lynch, is a CIA agent and, I can only guess based on her very limited role, Quaker Wells’ right hand man.

As presented in the film, Marta Lynch is little more than an extra who could have been played by anyone.  One can argue whether Ms. Eve is an “A” list actress or not, but she has a very long resume and has been featured in several very big movies yet her role here is so small and anemic that one wonders why a) she took the role and b) why the movie’s producers would hire her as she no doubt commands far better pay versus a smaller, lesser known actress.  Again, I can’t help but think there was more involved in the character of Marta Lynch but as the film was made her role was chopped down to near nothing.

Despite these oddball elements, I recommend Criminal.  It may not be The-Very-Best-Action-Film-Ever-Made© but it is a pleasant enough diversion whose chief strength lies in a very enjoyable acting turn by Kevin Costner.

Before I go, here’s the movie’s official trailer.  If you decide to see it, beware…it comes perilously close to revealing a little too much about the film.

Movies

Now You See Me 2 (2016) a (mildly) belated review

Back in 2013 the movie Now You See Me was released and became, at least to my mind, something of a surprise hit.  My daughter saw it and recommended it and, while I haven’t seen the full movie, I caught most of it one day on cable and found it an entertaining diversion…though just about everything that happened within the film would have been impossible for a group of four magicians to accomplish without some major cash and an army of assistants.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Now You See Me was about four magicians (played by Jesse Eisenberg, Woody Harrelson, Dave Franco, and Isla Fisher) who are engaged in a “Mission: Impossible” type …uh… mission and use their skills to expose nefarious deeds perpetrated by the film’s villain(s).

If my plot description sounds rather vague, this is on purpose.  I don’t want to get into too many details for those who haven’t seen the film and are curious to do so as there are plenty of revelations along the way and not everyone is who you think they are.

Again, what I saw of that film (roughly the last 2/3rds) was enjoyable.  Further, the film did well enough at the box office to merit a sequel.

2016’s Now You See Me 2 brings the whole gang back minus Isla Fisher’s Henley Reeves character.  She is replaced by Lizzy Caplan as Lula, who plays another highly skilled female magician.

If you liked the original film, Now You See Me 2 will probably appeal to you as well though this time around the revelations and surprises aren’t quite as “big” as they were in the first film.  Given what happened in the first film, I suspect there was no way they could be.

Yet the film, as directed by Jon M. Chu (taking over for the original’s Louis Letterrier), is a slick concoction that moves moves moves along at a heart-racing pace and is enjoyable enough…though it lacks the freshness of that first film.

In a piece of sly casting, everyone’s favorite wizard Daniel Radcliffe joins these proceedings as the movie’s main villain and he’s decent in a role that doesn’t ask all that much of him except to be the bad guy.

Is the film worth seeing?

If you have the free time, it is but the fact is that as slick as this movie is, and as neat as some of the sequences are (there’s one involving a card which is very slick indeed), this film is the definition of disposable entertainment.  What you have in Now You See Me 2 is a sugary concoction that won’t make you hate the fact that you gave a little over two hours  of your time watching it yet it won’t linger all that long in your head.  If it does, the only things you’ll think about are the movie’s many impossibilities.

Still, you could do far worse than spend time watching this film, though if you haven’t seen either it or the original I’d recommend seeing the first one and, depending on how much you like it, only then giving the second a try.

Which is my long winded way of saying I give Now You See Me 2 a mild recommendation.  Brainless, slick fun that you will enjoy…provided you don’t take it too seriously.

Movies

The LEGO Batman Movie (2017) a (just about right on time) review

When I first heard about 2014’s The LEGO Movie, I shook my head and arrogantly thought: This sounds like childish trash.

Then the movie was about to be released and I was incredibly surprised to find critics nearly unanimously loved the film.  (At this point in time, the movie has a 96% positive among critics and an equally impressive 87% positive among audiences over at Rottentomatoes.com)

Yet I didn’t see the film when it was released.

A few months later, it so happened the family and I were (don’t be jealous) vacationing in England and on the very long flight over there I checked out the films available for me to see and one of them was The LEGO Movie.  I decided to give it a try because, frankly, I was curious why the critics so liked it.  I still couldn’t believe it could be any good, yet I gave it a try and…

…I was smitten.

The film was incredibly creative, original, and hilarious.

One of the best things about the film was the way it incorporated so many characters into the story.  Characters like, you guessed it, Batman.

In fact, its safe to say that of all the special guest stars within The LEGO Movie Batman was the most consistently amusing, which is why it isn’t too big of a surprise that the studios realized they had a damn good thing on their hands and green lit, and this past weekend released, The LEGO Batman Movie (I’ll refer to it as TLBM from now on).

Here’s a “Behind the Bricks” featurette:

Once again featuring Will Arnett voicing Batman, TLBM also features a host of other well known actors voicing other characters.  There’s Michael Cera as Robin/Dick Grayson, Rosario Dawson as Barbara Gordon, Zach Galifianakis as The Joker, and Ralph Fiennes as Voldemor—no, he played Alfred (why exactly didn’t he voice Voldemort, whom he played in the Harry Potter films?!  Oh, they got Eddie Izzard to do that!).

The big question is: How does TLBM compare to The Lego Movie?  Is it on the same level?  Is it as good, as creative?

Sadly, the answer is no.

That’s not to say TLBM is a bust.  Far from it.

The movie’s first half, in particular, is incredibly amusing and often laugh out loud funny.  Unfortunately, somewhere along the line this film, at least to me, lost its momentum and, while its second half wasn’t bad, neither was it quite as sharp and amusing as that first half.

Please don’t misunderstand me: TLBM is a damn good film and easily recommended to not just those who like the LEGO world but to anyone who wants to see a good comedy (it helps if you have a geek’s awareness of many of Batman’s iterations, too, especially the Batman TV show of the 1960’s).  Just don’t expect the sustained highs of The Lego Movie.

Recommended but with that one little caveat.  (BTW, and without spoiling too much, the absolute best joke comes at Marvel’s expense.  Loved it.)

Movies

Mechanic: Resurrection (2016) a (mildly) belated review

How can a film with a relatively big budget (as these things go),with plenty of exotic locale filming, with some pretty good stuntwork, with some intriguing stars…turn out so damn dull?

As I started up Mechanic: Resurrection, the sequel to Jason Statham’s original 2011 The Mechanic (itself a remake of the far better Charles Bronson/Jan Michael Vincent film of the same name released in 1972), I had trouble getting into what I was seeing.

The opening action sequences were decent enough and helped re-establish the assassin/hitman character of Arthur Bishop (Jason Statham, natch)…and yet with each passing minute I couldn’t help but fight a too-strong sense of “been there, done that” with the proceedings, which involve Bishop trying to flee his previous life but getting “sucked back in” because he falls for Gina (Jessica Alba, not bad in the damsel in distress role but I really thought there would be one more twist regarding her character at the movie’s end) which allows the bad guys to kidnap her and force Bishop to take on three contracts.  In theory, they will let her -and he- go after these three assassinations.

Yeah, sure they will.

So we follow Bishop to different locales around the world (the film’s makers were going for a James Bond/Mission Impossible vibe) as he takes out his targets while figuring a means of getting his girl free.

The movie features not only Mr. Statham and Ms. Alba but Michelle Yeoh in a completely wasted/pointless role.  I can’t believe the film’s makers snagged one of the top Asian female action stars and put her in an action film yet couldn’t figure out a way to show off any of her athleticism or dexterity!  That’s right, kids, Ms. Yeoh has zero action scenes in this film!

Then there’s the extended cameo toward the end of the film by Tommy Lee Jones.  He plays Max Adams, the last of the three targets Bishop is being forced to kill.  It is a testament to Tommy Lee Jones’ acting skills that when he appears in the film’s last quarter he single-handedly enlivens this whole dull mess with nothing more than solid, cheerful, and charismatic acting.

Again, I’m at a loss: How could a film with, at least on paper, so many positives turn out so damn bland?

Mechanic: Resurrection should have been far better than it is.  Unfortunately, it fails to offer everything it promises and instead gives us a thriller without many thrills and a suspense film devoid of suspense.  A big disappointment.

PERSONAL DISCLAIMER:  Neither this film nor the original The Mechanic (Both the Bronson and Statham ones) have anything -other than the similar title- to do with my 2009 novel Mechanic, the first book in my Corrosive Knights series.

I admit the 1972 Bronson film was very familiar to me -indeed, I like that film and its nihilistic ending quite a bit- when I named my book, but the term “Mechanic” was used for many years before the release of that film to refer to hitmen and, at least in 2006/7/8/9 when I was working on the novel I figured no one remembered the Bronson film so there would be no confusion between it and my book.

Ah well!

Movies

Captain America: Civil War (2016) a (finally got to it) review

I’ve owned a copy of last summer’s blockbuster Captain America: Civil War (CACW from here on) for many months now and consider the previous Captain America film, The Winter Soldier, which was also directed by the Russo Brothers, one of the best superhero films ever made.

Yet I’ve actively avoided seeing CACW until last night.

Part of the problem lies in the fact that all I’ve read about the film suggests its plot is incredibly similar to that of Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, a film that got almost no love at all from critics and even today harshly divides fans.  If you’ve read my blog here for any length of time, you’ll know I love BvS and feel in time it will come to be regarded as one of the better superhero films made. (Just for context, my three favorite superhero films  at this point in time are Superman (1978), Captain America: The Winter Soldier, and Batman v Superman.)

The backlash against BvS was so damn strong in some parts that, against my better judgment, I found myself defending the film against its critics in some comment boards.  A silly thing to do, I know, as opinions are just that and can be strong and ingrained and implacable.  Nonetheless I attempted to express my opinions while not slamming others’ yet one thing recurred:  People compared BvS with CACW, with CACW being held as a great feature while BvS being belittled by those who hated it as crap.

So as much as I wanted to see CACW, in time I feared these comments/comparisons threatened to taint my opinions of this movie.  To put it bluntly: I worried that because I enjoyed BvS while others gleefully ripped it apart -and professed such love for CACW– I might take the opposite track and head into CACW with a far more critical eye than I should.

It’s happened before.  I’ve had experiences where “everyone” says a film is great and you go into the theater carrying high expectations only to be disappointed because the film wasn’t as great as you thought/hoped it would be.  On the other hand, I’ve also experienced occasions where “everyone” tells you a film is crap and you wind up being pleasantly surprised by what you’ve seen.

The bottom line is that I I don’t get to see as many films as I want to and when I do, I’m hoping to enjoy myself, not look for defects or carry burdensome expectations both pro and con.  Thus I avoided seeing CACW because I feared the opinions revolving around the movie and its “rivalry” with BvS might impact my own enjoyment of it.

So time passes and yesterday turns out to be really rotten, weather-wise.  It’s rainy and grim and the wife and I ventured out only once earlier in the day and were hunkered down at home for the rest.  Come 7 P.M., we’ve seen some stuff we’d recorded on the DVR and its too early to head to bed and we’re wondering what to do.

I decide its time, finally, to see CACW.

As the movie opens, the inevitable comparisons to BvS start.  Though I already knew this to be the case from so many spoilery blog entries, I’m nonetheless still surprised by how remarkably similar these stories are as they both involve our heroes dealing with the ramifications of the destruction they’ve made and ending in their confrontation.

In the case of BvS, the fight Superman had against General Zod in Man of Steel is witnessed first hand and on street level by Bruce Wayne (Batman), and after seeing this fearsome display, and the many thousands who died due to it, these visions unhinge the man to the point where he decides Superman has to go…something Lex Luthor is more than happy to exploit.

In CACW we have the Avengers being called out for the destruction they’ve caused in the previous films (and the current one) and they are told (not asked) to sign the “Sokovia Accords”, which will place them under a World/UN-type supervision.  Captain America isn’t interested in signing the agreement while Tony Stark (Iron Man) is and this, along with the fact that evidence suggests the Winter Soldier is involved in some terrorist activities, drives a wedge between the superheroes.

What follows is a broad, filled-to-the-brim Superhero spectacle that was very enjoyable to watch, even if it didn’t reach the levels, to me, of Captain America: Winter Soldier or -gasp!- Batman v Superman.

The first problem is that unlike Winter Soldier, I couldn’t help but feel this particular plate was over-filled.  CACW isn’t just a “Captain America” film and is too filled with characters to be an “Avengers” film.  It is perhaps the first “entire Marvel Universe” film.  I suspect that had the movie’s makers the ability to do so, we’d have seen the Fantastic Four and the X-Men in here as well…

…and it wouldn’t change the fact that this film’s plot, when all is said and done, isn’t all that great nor warrants such a large cast.  The two biggest “new” add-on super-characters are The Black Panther and a “new” Spider Man but unlike others who loved seeing them I found their appearance OK at best though it was an interesting choice to have Marisa Tomei play the venerable Aunt May.  Considering her character has always been presented in comics and film as a very old, very gray grandmotherly-looking person, the choice to cast Ms. Tomei is certainly interesting.

William Hurt and Martin Freeman also show up for what amounts to cameo roles and while Mr. Hurt’s Thaddeus Ross finds relevance in the story I felt Mr. Freeman’s Everette K. Ross didn’t need to be there other than to lock up the other half of the Sherlock duo into the Marvel film universe.

Going back to the movie’s plot, it is best not scrutinized too terribly much.  While the villain of the piece has a genuinely good -perhaps even great!- reason to want to break up the Avengers, the way he goes about it involves so many things working out so very well that its impossible a single person, even a gifted intellectual one, could devise and execute this plan.  Worse, am I wrong but I don’t believe his character knows, at least until close to the end of the film, if that one last piece of information (MILD SPOILERS: a video) which he hopes to use to break the “friendship” between Captain America and Iron Man, even still exists?  He has gone through this insanely intricate process to get not only himself but the main heroes to place X to find and play said video without knowing if it is still there or has deteriorated to the point of being un-viewable.  Had that been the case, then what?  Did he have a plan B?!

Despite this, CACW is a fun, if sugary, roller coaster ride whose highlight is an airport fight between the various superhero factions.  Unlike BvS, the movie’s makers never go as “dark” as that film and while the characters fight they did so in such a good-natured way and while issuing wise-cracks that you never took anything too terribly seriously…until the last fight that is, which is presented in a more “serious” manner.  The movie ends on a curiously unresolved note and that, too, bothered me a bit as I wonder if these plot points will be dealt with later on, especially considering the next Avengers films seem to be going in the direction of outer space.

CACW is a good, if not quite outstanding chapter in Marvel’s highly successful movie universe.  It’s not a bad way to spend your time but one can’t help but feel but the Rousso brothers took a step back from what they did the last time around.