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Movies

Extinction (2015) a (mildly) belated review

Perhaps the most fascinating aspect of Extinction, apart from the casting of two popular TV actors in the lead roles, is the fact it is a movie that uses a by now perhaps too common trope, that of a “zombie apocalypse,” to instead tell the tale of friendship gone very sour and the possibility of its redemption.

The relationship between the two leads, played by Lost’s Matthew Fox and Burn Notice’s Jeffrey Donovan, is never really explained.  Are they good friends?  Brothers?  Brothers-In-Law?  We never really know, though the film hints that their relationship existed a very long time, to when they were kids.

The movie begins with the two of them on a bus filled with other people.  Two heavily armed soldiers watch over the group as the bus, and another in front of it, head to some kind of safe ground. Perhaps they’re being moved to a military base or perhaps an airport to transport survivors somewhere else.

The two accompany Emma, an attractive young woman carrying a very young baby.  Tension rises as the child cries, and rises still more when the bus in front of them stops and doesn’t move.  Through the darkness the group cannot see what’s going on in the bus in front of them.

And then a gunshot is heard and soon all hell breaks loose.

In the ensuing chaos we discover our leads care deeply for Emma and her baby, and when a zombie-ish (they may be zombies, they may be people stricken with some kind of rage virus) attack hits their bus and, eventually, results in Emma getting bitten, we abruptly transition to nine years later.

We find that humanity may well be gone while Earth has entered a new Ice age.  Our two leads live literally right across from each other in barricaded homes but no longer speak to each other.

Jack (Jeffrey Donovan) cares for Lu, the now older baby we saw in the movie’s opening act.  He is well groomed and cares deeply for the child while across the way Patrick (Matthew Fox) has allowed his hair and beard to grow and lives in a house littered with dirt.  Patrick also drinks too much and appears to be on the verge of a nervous breakdown.  He looks like a mountain man and, apart from his dog companion, doesn’t interact with either Jack or Lu.

Not that Jack would allow him to.

We quickly realize something big happened between the two men since we were first introduced to them.  Over the course of the movie, we discover where that break occurred while also finding that the zombie threat, thought long gone after the cold weather took over the world, may not be quite over after all.

As mentioned before, this is a movie that is more focused on the relationship between these characters rather than feeding audiences horror chills.  In fact, there are exactly three big action scenes in the film, the first in its opening act, the second toward the middle, and at final one at the very end.  In between, we witness how Jack cares for the young Lu, a girl who feels herself being overly protected.  She’s also curious about Patrick and his dog, though anytime she approaches him Jack becomes unhinged.

For modern audiences, the movie’s languid pace might be a little too slow, especially if you’re used to the thrill-a-minute Walking Dead.  Worse, when we do finally discover what drove these two men apart, the revelation doesn’t feel as big/terrible as it might have been.

Still, the movie for the most part delivers regarding these character moments.  When Jack finally allows Patrick into his house for a meal and a truce, the scene makes your heart pound with both tension and the hope these two will finally resolve their differences.  It is here, in the movie’s very best scene, that the characters offer hints at their common past in front of the innocent Lu.  However, like in real life, old wounds aren’t healed so quickly or completely.

I don’t want to give away too much more but suffice to say that if you get into the characters, you will enjoy this film.  Unfortunately, where Extinction doesn’t work quite as well is when delivering its action/horror.  The opening zombie attack isn’t anything you haven’t seen plenty of times before.  The middle action scene suffers from some shoddy effects (alas, this is a low budget film and while they did well with creating a snowy apocalypse, its still a low budget affair).  The final attack works the best though it does involve another well-worn zombie trope done many times before and better: the siege.

The bottom line is that if you come into Extinction hoping to see tension filled horror/action film along the lines of a 28 Days Later or Dawn of the Dead (original or remake) or Walking Dead you will probably walk away disappointed.  However, because of the very good characterization presented and, especially, that dinner scene, I can’t entirely dismiss this film.

If I had to rate it on a four star scale, I’d give Extinction two to two and a half stars.  Make of this what you will.

Movies

Cop Car (2015) a (mildly) belated review

To create a successful action/suspense film, one has to make something that viewers wind up submerging themselves into.  In the best of all circumstances the viewer is no longer watching actors acting, they’re witnessing real life play out before them.  We root for the good guys/gals and hiss at the bad guys/gals and, as the action/suspense torque up, we fearfully wonder how and whether our hero(es) will make it out of their predicament alive.

This is, of course, easier said than done.  There are plenty of films out there, some very well made, which simply don’t engage the viewers in spite of the best attempts of the actors and directors.  A few years back I felt that way about the Tom Cruise film Jack Reacher.  As I noted in my review of it (you can read the full review here):

…the main problem with Jack Reacher and what keeps it from rising from being a good action film to being a truly great one is that there is never a point you don’t feel like you’re watching a movie.

Which brings us, inevitably, to Cop Car.

Cop Car is a low budget film which aims, as the trailer I’m about to present below points out, to fit into an odd niche.  It attempts to be a modern day Huckleberry Finn-type story merged with a bloody No Country For Old Men-type Coen Brothers feature.  See for yourself…

While the attempt is interesting, perhaps even unique, the movie itself, unfortunately, doesn’t deliver and what we have is a suspense film that is never all that suspenseful.  We also have a movie that, like Jack Reacher, never felt like something that would happen in “real life”.

Part of the problem is the setup itself.  The movie starts with our protagonists, two 10 year old boys who may (or may not, it is never made totally clear) be running away from home.  They walk a flat field and obviously live out in the middle of nowhere.

They walk on, talking childish things, until they spot a (ta-da!) cop car parked in a ravine and under some trees.  At first they think the cops are after them (again, they may have run away from home) but when they realize the car is empty, they approach it and, after playing inside it for a while, discover the car’s owner left the keys behind.  They start the car and, soon enough, drive off with it.

MILD SPOILERS FOLLOW!

We then backtrack a little in time to find that the man who drives the car, Sheriff Kretzer (Kevin Bacon playing a very oddball character), parked the car in this out of the way place to get rid of a corpse.  He had taken the body out of the trunk of his car and dragged it to a hole in the ground where he tossed it in.  When he returned to his car, he discovers it is gone and, of course, “hilarity” ensues.

As a viewer, I found all this set up so damn hard to swallow.

Our dirty cop leaves his car behind and goes somewhere so far away on foot -and dragging behind him a very heavy corpse- that he doesn’t hear his car start up?  Considering most of the land around them is flat, wouldn’t there have been some way for our evil cop to park his car much, much closer to where he intends to dump that corpse?

If not super-near, at least near enough to hear when the car is started?

That’s ignoring, by the way, the whole rather large coincidence of two runaway boys just happening to stumble upon a cop car in the middle of nowhere with the keys inside it and an evil cop doing evil things while just out of sight.

If you can get past that, there’s also this: The two 10 year old children who swipe the car are shown to not know how to drive.  When they start the cop car, it is clearly the very first time they’ve ever started any car.  In short order they’re driving off, though they don’t even know (yet) what the “P’ or the “R” stands for on the automatic shift (they state this later in the film).

Not only do they drive off with the car, they’re soon on the road and moving about without all that much trouble.  Granted, we are in the middle of the boonies but still, this is yet another hard fact the audience is expected to simply accept.  What makes the whole thing all that much worse is that there was an easy way to explain at least this part of the movie away: Just have one of the children say their older sister/brother or mother/father/uncle has allowed them to drive their car a couple of times.  They don’t have a great skill at driving, but at least they have enough to get the car moving.

But even if such a line of dialogue existed, it still doesn’t explain our Sheriff leaving the car alone with the keys inside, especially when he’s up to no good.

What follows is essentially a chase where the Sheriff searches for his car which, it turns out, has another surprise in its trunk.  Unfortunately, the movie’s languid pace and almost comical presentation of the Sheriff (as I said above, Kevin Bacon’s character is pretty odd and reminded me at times -by his look as well as some actions- of Lieutenant Jim Dangle from Reno 911!) further dilute the suspense we’re meant to feel.

When we reach the bloody climax, our heroes, the two children, are reduced to trapped witnesses as the bodies fall around them.  Afterwards, a final car chase feels hard to swallow given (again) our heroes just started driving that day.

I feel bad knocking Cop Car like I am.  As with Jack Reacher, the film was made by people who were attempting to deliver a solid, even unique, piece of entertainment.  Unfortunately the end result simply wasn’t all that good.

Too bad.

Movies

Taken 3 (2014) a (mildly) belated review

Back when it was released, someone said of Taken 3, the (obviously) third film in the surprisingly popular (at least until this point) Taken series:

Taken 3 makes Taken 2 look like Taken.

In other words, as bad as Taken 2 was, and many thought it was a big step down from the original, this one was far worse.

As for me, I agree with the sentiment that the first Taken was the best of the (so far) three made.  However, as much of a step down as the second film was, it did have its pluses.  I wouldn’t rank it among the best action films I’ve ever seen, but neither would I put it among the worst (my full review of Taken 2 can be read here).

And then there’s Taken 3…

If you were to see the film in a vacuum without comparing and/or thinking about the previous Taken films, you might find it a passable time-killer and not much else.  As I wasn’t too invested (or, frankly, could remember) all that many details of the previous Taken films other than general plotlines, I was able to watch this movie in that frame of mind and found it an ok time killer and nothing more.

The plot goes like this (some SPOILERS follow, though they are from the start of the film):

Bryan Mills (Liam Neeson) continues living his life.  We find he’s still dealing with his daughter Kim (Maggie Grace), whom he cares deeply about even while he stumbles about on dealing with the fact that she is no longer a child but a woman.  In the movie’s opening act we find she is pregnant and, while Mills isn’t aware of this, it doesn’t figure too much into the movie’s story.  Mills also finds time to be a shoulder to lean on for his beautiful ex-wife, Leonore St. Cloud (Famke Janssen).  In those opening minutes we also find that something preoccupies her, and it may relate to her current husband and the souring of their relationship.

When Mills receives a text to come see his ex-wife at his apartment, Mills buys some bagels (this turns out to be ridiculously important to the movie’s plot), heads home, and finds his wife on his bed…dead.  Her throat has been slashed.

Mere seconds after arriving and finding her dead, a pair of police officers bust into the apartment and Mills, right away, is their main suspect in his ex-wife’s murder.

Mills gets away and a Fugitive-like storyline plays out with Mills searching for whodunnit while the cops, including one allegedly super intelligent cop named Franck Dotzler (Forrest Whitaker) nip at his heels.

As I said before, if you were to enter this film without any predispositions or memories for the previous films -along with a willingness to ignore a storyline lifted almost whole from so many other films/TV shows/books, etc- you’ll find Taken 3 is at best a mildly diverting action/adventure film.  It moves along at a fair clip though one gets the feeling the people behind the scenes involved in it didn’t quite give it their all.

Mind you, I’m not knocking the work of Liam Neeson, Forrest Whitaker, Maggie Grace, and Famke Janssen (in what amounted to a cameo).  They deliver their characterizations well.  Unfortunately, the people who produced/directed the film, I suspect, were more interested in making a quick and cheap work, one that would hit the theaters fast and make them some profit.  The storyline, as I mentioned before, is hardly anything new or original.  The action sequences are decent but nothing extraordinary.  The special effects, on the other hand, are mostly cheap.  Two in particular, involving a container rolling along a highway and a car smashing into an aircraft, are almost laughable.

But as with most underperforming movies, the main fault always lies in the story/script.  The movie’s worst offense is turning the Bryan Mills’ character into a standard action hero.  What made him unique and interesting in the first Taken film, in my opinion, was the startling lengths he was willing to go to get his daughter.  At one point in the film he visits an old police friend in France who welcomes him into his house with open arms.  During the course of what appeared to be an amicable visit, Mills shows his teeth.  He knows his friend has knowledge of who the bad guys are that he’s looking for and when his police friend is unwilling to give him that information, Mills brutally threatens the man’s wife to get what he wants.

This, to me, was what made Mills such a unique action hero.  He’s a shark and he’ll do whatever the hell he has to, including not just burning but nuking bridges to get to his goal.

In Taken 3, though, he’s become an ordinary hero, one who even has time for some levity/one liners.  While the use of one-liners can be groan inducing, I have to give the filmmakers credit for at least one thing here: The moment I enjoyed most in the film, the one that made me laugh out loud, was when you have a police officer delivering your typical cliched “You have no hope/we will hunt you down/you should give up right now” speech and Mills replying with something along the lines of “don’t be so pessimistic”.

So, in sum, Taken 3 is, at best, an OK time killer that feels like a lazy effort by those who made it, if not those who acted in it.  I suppose the original adage is correct.  Taken 3 is easily the least of the three Taken films and, based on the critical reaction, perhaps the series will die with it.

In that case, it might be a merciful end.

And now for something completely different…Liam Neeson is absolutely hilarious here:

Movies

Zoolander (2001) a (very) belated review

It’s interesting when certain movies or books or TV shows display life after a lackluster initial release.

I recall many, many years ago, 1982 to be exact, when the Wes Craven directed Swamp Thing landed in theaters.  I was attending high school at a boarding facility and distinctly recall seeing a commercial for the film for the first time with a group of friends.  Everyone, and I mean everyone around me hooted and scoffed at the commercial.  They were certain the film was a total POS.

These same people were even more astonished when I told them I knew about the character and actually liked the Len Wein/Berni Wrightson comic book it was based on (at that point Alan Moore’s take on the character was still to come, though the movie did result in a new Swamp Thing series which, eventually, led to Alan Moore’s arrival on the U.S. comic book scene).

In fact, I loved (still love!) those original 10 issues of the Wein/Wrightson Swamp Thing so much that, risking considerable teenage ridicule, I went to see the film when it was released a week or so later.

Other than me, there was absolutely no one in the theater.

To say the least, Swamp Thing, the movie, was a complete bust.  But something curious happened on the way to its irrelevancy.  The movie was released to cable and, lo and behold, people saw it and realized it wasn’t the total crap-fest they thought it was.  I’d be the last person to vigorously defend the merits of the film, but it did carry enough of the old Wein/Wrightson comic book ideas to make it at the very least an enjoyable time killer.

The eventual unlikely success of that film led to a second Swamp Thing film, a TV series, a cartoon series, and, of course, the emergence of author Alan Moore.  And this isn’t counting offshoots like John Constantine (an Alan Moore creation who first appeared in Swamp Thing and subsequently has appeared in movies and a TV show, among others).

Which brings us to the 2001 Ben Stiller film Zoolander.  According to Box Office Mojo, the film was made for approximately $28 million and grossed $45 million, which makes it profitable but not anywhere near approaching blockbuster status (the amount the movie was made for doesn’t include advertising costs).

If memory serves, the film left theaters fairly quickly, though perhaps the movie did suffer from the fact that it was released on September 28 of 2001, very shortly after the tragic events of 9/11, and people maybe weren’t in much of a mood for humorous movies.

Yet not unlike Swamp Thing, the film had a rebirth of sorts over time.  After its initial release more and more people got to see the film and they apparently liked what they saw.  In 2016, a full fifteen years after its release, Zoolander 2 will arrive to theaters.

In all this time, I’ve caught bits and pieces of Zoolander on TV but never sat through the entire film.  Until now.

What I found was an amusing -if light- comedy that takes an interesting almost science fictional plot as its storyline: What if we lived in a world where males were supermodels?  And what if someone like Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson -two people we would hardly classify as top models in any reality- were the two hottest models out there?

Further, what if both of them are crushingly stupid and become involved in a Manchurian Candidate-style plot to kill off a Malaysian ruler, a man who wants to create child labor laws in his country which will inevitably hurt the fashion industry that thrives on creating their clothing using very, very cheap labor of this kind?

Zoolander isn’t the best comedy I’ve ever seen, not by a long shot, but it is very funny -hilariously so at times- and breezes by.  Within the film you get some fascinating cameos (including amusing ones featuring Billy Zane and David Bowie), along with equally amusing appearances by Will Ferrell, Milla Jovovich, and David Duchovny.

What I found most incredible about Zoolander is that the writers, including Ben Stiller, managed to create an almost James Bondian-type plot that logically revolves around issues of fashion and the creation thereof.  Sure the film features plenty of “stupid” humor (which if done right I absolutely love…check out the whole pouring gas scene early in the film), but to have a plot that actually touches on something as real as child labor laws and the fact that top fashion industries rely on cheap labor to get their products out there?

Rather stunning.

As I said before, Zoolander isn’t the very best comedy I’ve ever seen but it is quite humorous and -dare I say it?- clever in its own way.  I can certainly understand why this film found life after a so-so first release.  Recommended.

Movies

Shaun of the Dead (2004) a (very) belated review

Shaun of the Dead, the first part of The Three Flavours Cornetto trilogy, went a very long way in helping the careers of actor/writer Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, and director/writer Edgar Wright.  And for good reason!

After transferring many of my movies to the cloud, the family and I were sitting around, wondering what to see over the weekend and everyone wanted a comedy.  I suggested they give this film a try, though to be honest outside of the film’s central plot (working shlub loses girlfriend and tries to win her back during the zombie apocalypse… something it takes this dimwitted -though kindly- soul a good while to figure out is happening) I didn’t recall all that much about it.

This is usually not a good sign and I feared the film might not be all that good…at least for them.

My memory of the other two films in the Cornetto trilogy, 2007’s Hot Fuzz and 2013’s The World’s End were fresher.  I could even recall more regarding the non-Cornetto film Paul, which also featured Pegg and Frost, than SotD.

So, naturally, the film turned out to be not all that great, right?

Wrong.

My lack of memory might be related to the fact that this was my first exposure to the works of Pegg/Frost/Wright and I might have been more focused on the zombie and apocalypse stuff rather than what actually “made” the film: the characters and their interactions.  Either that or I was distracted during that showing and wasn’t paying all that much attention.

Regardless, shame on me because SotD is an absolute delight and as much as I enjoyed both Hot Fuzz and The World’s End (Hot Fuzz a lot more than The World’s End), SotD is to my eyes clearly the best of the Cornetto trilogy.

Then again, it is the movie that features the most interesting subject matter for this particular brand of parody.  Bear in mind, too, that the whole zombie apocalypse concept, so common now, wasn’t quite that common back in 2004.  In that year we had the release of the Dawn of the Dead remake and it would be six years before Walking Dead showed up on TV.

So the film was an early example of the popular zombie genre and the subject of its parody/humor was mostly a nod to the much smaller base of zombie fanatics who loved the George Romero “Dead” trilogy.

In the character of Shaun, Simon Pegg is a riot.  He’s presented as a kindly bloke who likes the simple things in life: Frequenting his favorite pub, hanging out with his slacker flatmate Ed (Nick Frost), staying as far away from his stepfather as he can, working a dead-end electronics job, and trying his best to keep the flame going with his increasingly turned off girlfriend Liz (Kate Ashfield).

But life proves too complicated for Shaun and when he screws up a dinner date with Liz and, to make matters worse, tries to patch things up in a very awkward and obvious way with flowers meant for someone else, Liz ditches Shaun and his life comes crashing down…both literally and figuratively.

So focused is Shaun on his personal problems that he doesn’t notice all the strange things -both small and large- going on around him, hints that the zombie apocalypse is well underway.  It isn’t until he’s quite literally face to face with a zombie that he realizes the danger everyone is in and then decides to go into action.  Oh, and win his girlfriend’s heart back.

SotD is at its best in the early going when that zombie apocalypse is happening and Shaun just misses realizing this is the case.  The jokes during this section of the film are both in your face and subtle, ranging from Shaun impatiently changing the channels of his TV just as they’re about to talk of the apocalypse to -my favorite- what happens just after he grabs that drink the second time he goes to the convenience store while not noticing the bloody handprints on the refrigeration unit.

SotD is also a very (pardon the pun) “meaty” comedy.  Stuff is constantly happening and it is clear a great deal of effort was put into making this screenplay.

Do I recommend the film?

If you can’t tell by now, you weren’t paying attention.

By the way, the movie is much better than this pretty lame trailer makes it seem.

Movies

Justice League: Gods and Monsters (2015) a (mildly) belated review

When word came that Bruce Timm had a new project for DC’s animated universe, there was much rejoicing.  This project, released this past year, was Justice League: Gods and Monsters and featured a decidedly darker take on DC Comic’s “big three” superheroes, Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman.

In this alternate universe, Superman’s father is General Zod rather than Jor-El.  Rather than millionaire Bruce Wayne, Batman is Kirk Langstrom (aka Man-Bat in the regular DC Universe).  Wonder Woman is Bekka, a child of this universe’s High Father from the New Gods rather than an Amazon.  She, along with her lineage, have a much darker backstory than that which is presented in the regular DC Universe.

Interesting stuff for certain, but while I was eager to see the film, I feared that it might prove a little too “dark” to really enjoy.

And the movie most certainly starts that way!

In the opening scenes, those which give us this universe’s origin of Superman, we see what can only be described as a Kryptonian “rape” being the way that General Zod becomes Superman/Hernan Guerra’s father.  Now, PLEASE UNDERSTAND THAT WHAT IS PRESENTED IN THE FILM ISN’T AS GRAPHIC AS I MAKE IT SOUND IN THE ABOVE DESCRIPTION, but if you consider what you are presented with, that is effectively what happens.

We fast forward to present time in this world and the three superheroes are shown on a mission.  They are arrogant and more than willing to use their powers in gruesome ways.  They dispatch a group of terrorists, including some alternate world versions of supervillains, with maximum casualties.

These early scenes are meant to show us that while this version of the Justice League does deal with villainy, their methods are very grim and, naturally, make people very uncomfortable.  So uncomfortable, in fact, that many protest these “heroes” and wish they would disappear.  The U.S. Government, meanwhile, uses them while looking at them with a very weary eye.

With the opening over, we then move into the movie’s main plot: Someone is targeting well known -and incredibly brilliant- scientists (It helps to have an awareness of who many of these characters are) and making it look like the “Big Three” were responsible for their assassinations.

In investigating the deaths, the Big Three realize they are being framed.  Given the unease I already mentioned regarding their status in this world, it won’t take all that much to turn humanity completely against them.

As I said, going into this movie I feared it might be a little too dark to enjoy, and in the early going the movie more than earned its PG-13 rating.  Along with the already mentioned Kryptonian “rape”, there is a bit of sexual innuendo presented via the various characters and for this reason I’d recommend anyone thinking of showing this movie to their kids to see it themselves first and then decide if it is appropriate.

Having said all that, JL: G&M wound up being a blast.

Yes, it is grim and yes, it does have some faults (I’ll get into them in a second), but damn if it doesn’t deliver an interesting story that, while it may start a little slow, grips you by the end.

The faults?  To begin, as this is a “new” take on the three principle characters, valuable screen time has to be devoted to their backstory and, with the exception of Superman’s at the very beginning, this backstory (for Batman and Wonder Woman) drops on the viewer in rather clumsy ways, IMHO. Why?  Because these backstories are presented just as the movie’s central mystery is developing steam and kinda stops things in their tracks.  However, because this backstory is necessary to understand the characters as well as this mystery, these scenes prove necessary, though they do stop the movie’s momentum.

The sexual innuendo mentioned above, also, turned me off.  Mind you, I’m far from a prude as my novels surely attest, but we are talking about a Superman/Batman/Wonder Woman story…did we need as much sexual banter as was presented in the early going?

Finally, and I have to tread very softly here for fear of getting into SPOILERS, but the return of a central character at the movie’s climax…why did it take this person so long to show up?  Had this person appeared a little earlier, it might have avoided quite a mess.

I’ll leave it at that!

Regardless of these flaws, I repeat: JL: G&M was a blast.  I enjoyed the hell out of it even as I was engaged into and trying to solve the mystery.  When all is said and done the mystery is classic Agatha Christie and I absolutely loved the resolution.

Good job.  I most definitely look forward to more!

Movies

Furious 7 (2015) a (mildly) belated review

I’m going to go out on a limb here and say if you’ve enjoyed the previous Fast & Furious films, chances are you’ll like Furious 7.

For me, watching the film turned into a strange case of deja vu… but not because this movie was too similar to the past couple (though it was, of course).

Rather, watching Furious 7 felt like watching a hot-rod variation of The Avengers: Age of Ultron.  They both feature a group of (super) heroic individuals coming together to go after a big bad.  In both cases, they deal with some kind of computerized problem.  And of course, the characters are colorful and varied and do all kinds of superheroic stuff.  Plus, you get another bunch of characters from previous films appearing here and there which gives the audience a sense of a larger shared universe.

Granted, what I’ve just written above applies to other films but given how recently I saw AOU and then Furious 7, I couldn’t help but feel I was watching the same type of film.

Which of course leads me to match them up and, in this case, I’d rank Furious 7 over AOU.  Sure, I enjoyed AOU, but the film had plenty of problems and one got the feeling that director/writer Joss Whedon was hamstrung by Disney’s higher ups.  There were moments when AOU felt disjointed, as story material was cut out either in the script stage or snipped from the film itself.  Though the actors appeared to have great fun and there were some really good action sequences, the apparent flaws killed many people’s enjoyment of AOU, though these flaws weren’t big enough to kill mine.  Still, I would acknowledge it was far from one of the best of the Marvel films.

Getting back to Furious 7, you would think that this film might have even more continuity problems given the tragic death of actor/co-star Paul Walker.  His role in this film would wind up being his last one as he died in a horrific car accident only a couple of weeks before his filming ended.

For a while, there was concern the film would be scrapped but enough of it was already “in the can” that whatever extra scenes were left for Mr. Walker to fill could be done via the magic of previous cut footage from other F&F films and computer effects.  Further, because of Mr. Walker’s death the focus of the film had to be changed as well to pay tribute to his character and acknowledge that this would be his last round with the F&F crew.

Given all this, its amazing that Furious 7 feels very much like a complete film.  Yes, there are times, especially during the final shots of Mr. Walker’s character riding off, that look like they were created in a computer, but nonetheless the film feels very much like what was intended and, by its end, pays a very heartfelt respect to Mr. Walker.

Furious 7’s plot is rather standard but not uninteresting: The bigger, badder brother of one of the previous villains our cast faced (Jason Statham basically delivering his Transporter character to the F&F universe…but he’s a bad guy this time around!) goes after them.  To get to him, they have to get their hands on the “God’s Eye”, a computer program that simultaneously looks though and analyzes information from ALL cameras and computer devices in the world.

And it would appear the villain -while he isn’t trying to kill the F&F cast- is after the device as well…

Jason Statham’s Deckard Shaw proves a very nice addition to the F&F universe.  These films, while entertaining, never had a truly recognizable big bad to match the good guys up against (No disrespect to the previous actors involved, but I’m having a hard time remembering the villains from the past films, other than the “surprise” villain in F6).  With Jason Statham, we have a very recognizable star as your menace, doubly so as he’s somewhat cast against type: He’s played good guys in so many features but can do bad guys quite well (check out his turn in Cellular if you don’t believe me).

A few more familar faces show up to liven things, including the always welcome Kurt Russell in a smallish role as an amiable government spook and MMA superstar Ronda Rousey in a cameo appearance as a security guard who goes toe to toe against Michelle Rodriguez’s Letty.

In conclusion, I enjoyed Furious 7.  The movie moved quickly (no pun intended) and featured enough humor and action to sate your appetite.  Is the film a classic?  No.

But it is a pretty damn entertaining popcorn action film that pays a very respectful tribute to its real life fallen star.

Bring on Furious 8.

Movies

What We Do In The Shadows (2014) a (very mildly) belated review

Released last year, What We Do In The Shadows is a comedy which imagines what would happen if a reality show crew decided to follow a group of four vampires around and see how they live (they share an apartment) and interact with their environment.

Cleverly, these four vampires run the gamut of movie vampire tropes, from a Nosferatu-like ghoul to a Vlad the Impaler to a Anne Rice-ian dandy to a “newer” Twilight-like Vampire.  This later vampire, though the youngest of the group (at first), is nonetheless 100+ years old and imagines himself a good looking “bad boy”…though he amusingly clearly isn’t.  Later on we have -MILD SPOILERS!- a really new vampire appear, and I suspect that one was based on (perhaps) The Lost Boys.

While the movie starts rather slowly, it features a solid, well conceived plot that builds a healthy backstory and cast to our main vampires and subsequently leads to a nice, even sweet, climax/resolution that ties all the various threads into a nice bun.

For obvious reasons, I won’t get into specific details here!

On the minus side, the film is a “slow burn”.  It takes a bit to get to know the characters and what they’re about and, therefore, for the audience to start caring for the story presented.  While the pace didn’t bother me to the point of where I wanted to shut the whole thing off, I can imagine there are less patient people out there who will.  Too bad for them because the film does deliver some hearty laughs.

I could go on but I don’t want to get into more spoilery material.  Suffice to say if you like your humor subtle as well as in your face and enjoy comedies that explore decidedly odd directions, you will enjoy What We Do In The Shadows.

Movies

Spartan (2004) a (very) belated review

As I’ve been transferring more and more of my films to digital and in doing so I’ve stumbled upon some movies I hadn’t seen since first purchasing them sometimes many years before.

One such work is the acclaimed playwright David Mamet’s 2004 directed/written film Spartan.  Other than the fact that the film featured Val Kilmer as a secret service (or somesuch) agent searching for the President of the United State’s missing daughter (an early screen appearance by Kristen Bell) I recalled next to nothing else about this film.

After watching it, I can see why.

Now, before you assume I’m going to slam this film hard, don’t.  Even with the considerable problems the films has (I’ll get into them after the trailer below), I’d probably give this film two to two and a half stars out of four.  It was entertaining enough (especially in the early going) to interest me but the film’s later half had many problems…all of them related to the screenplay.

Since I’ll be getting into considerable spoilers here, let me say this: If you’re a fan of David Mamet’s work, you may want to give Spartan a look.  It may not be up there with some of his best written work especially considering how much of the plot revolves around at times extremely hard to swallow coincidences (again, I’ll get into them in a moment), but the film isn’t a complete disaster.

Faint praise, I know, but I can’t deny watching the film to its end and therefore it did, at the very least, keep my attention.

Anyway, here’s Spartan’s trailer and afterwards we’ll get into some heavy story spoilers.  However, in watching this trailer, it occurs to me this is yet another case where the trailer gives away too much, so watch at your own peril.  What follows from this point on are…

SPOILERS!!!!

 

Still here?

Don’t say you haven’t been warned!

All right so the first part of Spartan introduces us to Scott (Val Kilmer) a no-nonsense “I do anything I’m ordered” soldier.  He’s resourceful, he’s deadly, and effective.

Scott is brought in from a training mission due to a critical emergency: The Daughter of the President of the United States has disappeared.  After a bit of investigating, the Secret Service team comes to believe she has been kidnapped.  The kidnappers, it is also believed, don’t know who they have.  These kidnappers are sex slavers.  They kidnap women from the United States and force them work in a brothel in Dubai.

With a very tight deadline (the worry being that the kidnappers will discover who they have kidnapped), the Secret Service is on red alert, tracking leads and getting closer and closer to the ones that run the brothel.  There is Mission: Impossible-style chicanery and misdirection, especially when Scott acts as if he’s a common thug to try to worm his way closer to one of the higher ups in the prostitution/kidnapping organization.  Though they are operating without 100% certainty that they’re following the trail of the President’s Daughter, they forge ahead.

Until…

Shortly after the infiltration plan fizzles, news agencies report that the President’s Daughter’s body was found.  She had apparently drowned with her teacher/lover and, the Secret Service group assumes, they were chasing another similar looking woman (again, they were never 100% certain the kidnapped woman was the President’s Daughter).  The mission, it appears, is over.

But all is not what it seems.

Scott’s new partner, Curtis (Derek Luke), realizes that the media is being fed a pile of bull and it is here that those pesky (and truly hard to swallow) coincidences start to rear their heads.

A little earlier in the film and while staking out a beach house Scott and Curtis suspect might have the kidnapped President’s Daughter in it, three whooper coincidences occur:

1) Curtis sees squiggled in a window’s dust a sign attributed to the President’s Daughter (oh yeah, when kidnapped by sex slavers everyone leaves weird personal marks known only to the person making them and her boyfriend instead of “Please help me” messages!)

2) For no reason I could see other than to help Scott a little later on, a scarecrow is left on a seat behind a shack by the beach house.  Said scarecrow is also conveniently facing away from the beach (I’ll explain why that’s important in a moment), and…

3) Curtis, when stationing himself to cover Scott while he enters the house just happens to lay his tarp on the ground where it picks up the President’s Daughter’s earring.  The earring, a veeeery tiny little thing, just happens to have been dropped there for him to pick up and, also coincidentally, Curtis subsequently finds a nice photograph of the President’s Daughter in a newspaper that just absolutely beautifully displays her wearing this very earring.  Think hard about this: Of all the family pictures I have with my wife and daughters (and there are many of them) I can all but guarantee you there probably isn’t a single one that I could identify an earring they’re wearing in it, yet Curtis finds a beautiful newspaper picture that is clear enough in showing a tiny earring on the President’s Daughter.

Whew.

The very hard to swallow coincidences #1 and 3 are needed later on when Curtis convinces Scott’s “I’m a soldier and follow orders” protagonist to realize that his superiors are bamboozling the media and the world and that the President’s Daughter was indeed kidnapped and did not drown with her supposed teacher/lover.

The two return to the beach house to investigate but as they begin their search for the “sign” left behind Curtis is shot dead and Scott is forced to hide behind the (you guessed it) shack with that curiously placed scarecrow.  He’s pinned down by the sniper who took out Curtis, so what will he do?  How oh how will he ever escape?  If only he had a means of diverting the sniper, of making him think he’s been shot…

Good thing there’s a damn convenient scarecrow within arm’s reach, eh?

Yup, Scott dresses the scarecrow in his clothing and the sniper takes the scarecrow out.  Instead of then coming ashore (the sniper and his crew are on a boat just offshore) and making sure of the kills, they go away which in turn gives Scott time to escape.

Now, you would think this would end the preposterous coincidences, right?

Wrong.

We get a few more, including an elderly Secret Service (female) Agent that has Scott dead to rights and should have shot him the moment she suspected he wasn’t who he said he was (and while he was standing, by the way, just a few feet of the first lady!).  Turns out she (coincidentally!) knows the First Daughter very well and has a stronger emotional attachment to her than her actual parents.

And then, later on, Scott heads out to Dubai and manages to get a hold of the First Daughter only to find that he’s been bugged.  All appears doomed except, MEGA-COINCIDENCE a Swedish news group happens to be in the hanger where the final shootout occurs and they get footage of the very much alive First Daughter and are also able to flee the airport with her in tow.

The lie of the First Daughter’s death is therefore revealed though the principals behind it, we find, are clever enough to hide their devious deeds.

And so our movie ends.  As someone who fancies himself a writer, pointing out all these outrageous coincidences is giving me a headache.

I don’t know the history behind the making of this film and it is very possible Mr. Mamet was in a rush to complete the screenplay and had to do what he could to make the story make some kind of sense.  But in this case, the glue that holds the plot together is held by some very hard to swallow coincidences.

If the above bugs you, then steer clear of Spartan.

Movies

Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015) a (mildly) belated review

There has been much scorn heaped upon this past summer’s big hit Avengers: Age of Ultron.  Having missed the film when it was in theaters (not a big surprise) and despite the many complaints I read online, I was nonetheless eager to watch it and, when it finally arrived, I purchased it via VUDU (you can also get it through Amazon.  The physical disc version will be out soon).

Going into the movie, I wasn’t sure how I’d react.  I liked the first Avengers film despite some pretty big plot problems (why did the aliens need to arrive right over New York?  Why didn’t they just materialize, say, behind the Moon and, when an overwhelming amount of their forces was already through the wormhole, then invade Earth?).  I also liked several of the Marvel films that came before while I hated some others.  Captain America: The Winter Soldier is probably my favorite of the Marvel films while for the life of me I can’t understand what anyone found good about Guardians of the Galaxy.

With Age of Ultron (I’ll call it AOU from here on), I liked the actors playing the various superheroes.  I also really liked the idea of getting James Spader to play Ultron, the film’s big baddy.  He’s got one of those great voices that just drips evil when he wants it to.  On the other hand, the movie featured one hell of a lot of characters and, as mentioned, it appeared many fans who otherwise loved Marvel films turned away from this one.

So I watched the film and, incredibly, I found myself siding with those who complained about several aspects of the film…and yet I enjoyed it nonetheless!

Yes, the film was awfully long.  Yes, Ultron wasn’t the be-all end-all villain he should have been.  Yes, the whole Thor goes to that mythical waters scene made no sense (the video release includes a “deleted” extended version of that scene and I’m here to tell you…it still makes no sense).  Yes, writer/director Joss Whedon tried a little too hard to include more “heavy” concepts (check out how many times he tries to shoehorn in the concept of everyone in the film being a “monster” of some sort).  Yes, and paradoxically, the dialogue is at times too cheeky and “jokey” and this diminishes the threat levels the protagonists face…

And yet…and yet…

I still enjoyed the film.

Not, however, at first.  The film’s opening minutes, featuring the Avengers attacking one of Hydra’s last strongholds, was a computer generated mess, never more than cartoonish looking at best.  This was a real surprise…and disappointment…considering the much higher level of CGI that came afterwards.  I can’t help but wonder if that opening bit was created at the last minute.  Considering it is what sets up the rest of the movie, though, that doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense.

Yet once the opening attack is over, the film proper began and, again, I enjoyed what I saw despite the enumerated problems mentioned above.

In AOU, the Avengers have a crisis of faith with each other that threatens to tear them apart yet through the course of the film they slowly regain their shattered trust before finally confronting their nemesis head on.

Along the way we’re introduced to a trio of new (to the Marvel movie universe) characters.  Again, one would worry that with so much going on and so many faces flashing by that several would inevitably get the short shift.  Yet to Mr. Whedon’s credit, everyone gets a decent amount of screen time and are able to strut their stuff.  Other than the already mentioned nonsensical Thor scene which was the only complete story misfire, things moved along well and I was never bored or at a loss as to what the heck was going on which was quite an accomplishment in and of itself!

No, AOU is not the “best” superhero movie ever made and yes, it has several flaws.  In spite of that, it is an enjoyable romp with a group of charismatic actors in their prime having a blast playing superheroes and villains.

What’s wrong with that?