directed by Paul Greengrass
written by Paul Greengrass and Christopher Rouse
Whatever one feels about Universal Pictures' Bourne series of films starring Matt Damon, one cannot deny that it has been a remarkable action movie franchise. Each film has earned more at the box office than the last, and has gotten better reviews than the last. Their hot streak broke a few years back when neither director Paul Greengrass, who helmed The Bourne Supremacy and The Bourne Ultimatum nor star Matt Damon was interested in making a new film, and Universal unwisely decided to make a spin-off/sequel hybrid with then "it boy" Jeremy Renner playing a different character, albeit one similarly conditioned as Jason Bourne. That film was not well received critically or commercially, and the studio was at a loss as to where to go next.
Fortunately for Universal, Greengrass finally decided a year or two ago that he was interested in giving the franchise another go, and with Damon in tow they proceeded to make the first movie featuring Jason Bourne in nearly a decade entitled, aptly enough, Jason Bourne.
It's been several years since the events of The Bourne Ultimatum (with the events in The Bourne Legacy spinoff having been conveniently ignored) and former amnesiac assassin for the Central Intelligence Agency Jason Bourne (Matt Damon) is spending his days as a bare-knuckle boxer somewhere in Greece. Meanwhile, his erstwhile colleague and fellow CIA operative gone rogue Nicky Parsons (Julia Stiles) has unearthed a chilling new black-ops program of the CIA involving online invasion of privacy that could be even worse than the one that created Jason Bourne. In hacking into the system, Parson has put herself in the crosshairs of the CIA, now headed by Robert Dewey (Tommy Lee Jones) with the help of IT wizard Heather Lee (Alicia Vikander). She also learns crucial information about the only person she knows who could blow this whole thing wide open: Jason Bourne, whom she tracks down in Greece. Unfortunately, that puts him in the CIA's sights as well, particularly a rather nasty assassin with a score to settle (Vincent Cassel). Bourne's a bit older, and considerably more world weary, but this time he has good reason to come in out of the cold: this time it's personal.
As much as I have enjoyed all of the Bourne films prior to this one, I have to admit they all follow a very similar narrative structure: Bourne unearths a mystery that involves his past with the CIA, fights through a bunch of throwaway CIA agents, including at least one "boss battle" (in the first one, there were two), gets involved in a lengthy car chase, then manages to ruin the big bad guy without his fists. It's a perfect balance of exposition and action, a formula from which the last film, the one without Jason Bourne in it deviated, for which they paid dearly.
Well, with the return of Greengrass, Damon and Jason Bourne to the series after a one-film and nine-year hiatus, we also see a return of the old formula, complete with the mystery, the boss battle and the car chase, albeit in a slightly different order, and to be honest, for the most part, I didn't mind. It was the cinematic equivalent of eating comfort food.
The thing is, while Greengrass still has serious action storytelling chops and while Damon still has the edginess that made Bourne such a watchable character, I could not get around how tacked on this movie felt. For example, the given reasons for Bourne getting back "in the game," especially considering how neatly The Bourne Ultimatum tied up the trilogy felt a tad forced. Basically, Greengrass (who co-wrote this film with film editor Christopher Rouse) retroactively gave Bourne yet another axe to grind against the CIA. I'm also not sure I really care for the subtext behind that particular plot device. Are the writers suggesting that Bourne won't do anything to stop the CIA (which has a particularly insidious scheme in this film) if it doesn't somehow involve tidbits of his past?
Not only that, but as gratifying as the action sequences are, they definitely have a been-there-done-that feel to them. Greengrass's fight scenes still pack a wallop and Damon looks great, even at 45, but really, after Gareth Evans' The Raid films, the Russo brothers' Captain America movies and even Netflix's Daredevil series took bone-crunching hand-to-hand action to another level, the onus was on the Bourne crew to step things up a bit as well. They didn't do their fight scenes any favors by having several of the sequences semi-obscured by darkness, including a climactic fight scene. The "boss battles" in the first three Bourne movies still stand out for me, especially since they were all filmed in daylight.
Finally, Greengrass and company approach the requisite car chase with somewhat uncharacteristic bombast and excess, the sort of over-the-top, illogical approach one would see in a Michael Bay movie. The chase in Doug Liman's The Bourne Identity, involving a Mini Cooper and the streets of Paris, was so well-done that it compares favorably to such classic car-chase scenes as those in Ronin or The French Connection. The chase here, set along the Las Vegas strip and which features an armored truck which is more like a cross between a Lamborghini and a tank, looks like it came out of a Transformers movie and, unbelievably enough, actually manages to take too long. My 14-year-old son, a huge fan of the series who has seen every one of the original films on DVD at least twice, fell asleep during the chase, and while I did not doze off (at least not during that particular sequence), I cannot say I blame him.
The performances, fortunately, are generally good. Damon and Stiles, the only veterans from the original films, slip quite comfortably into their roles again, and I was grateful that, in a day and age in which digital de-aging and botox are all the rage, the actors wear their wrinkles quite prominently. Tommy Lee Jones is, well, Tommy Lee Jones again as he puts a somewhat malevolent spin on his federal marshal from The Fugitive. Vincent Cassel was appropriately stoical as an unnamed CIA asset (I'm serious; in the credits, his character is identified solely as "Asset"), but I have to reiterate that he was totally wasted in the climactic fight scene. I'd known this guy could do impressive onscreen fighting since I saw him in 2000's The Crimson Rivers and 2002's The Brotherhood of the Wolf, and when I read he was cast in this film I was genuinely excited to see his character throw down with Bourne. There was quite a gap, unfortunately, between expectation and the actual product. Alicia Vikander turned in a decent performance as Heather Lee, but as a Swede playing an American she seemed to be struggling with her accent, not completely unlike the way her compatriot Noomi Rapace strained a bit to play an Englishwoman in Prometheus. One performance that stood out for me was that of Riz Ahmend as Aaron Kapoor, a Mark-Zuckerberg-like IT magnate who makes a deal with the devil and is keen to wiggle out of it.
The good news for me is that I think Greengrass and Damon still have a few stories left to tell with this character, and judging from the grosses, it looks like they'll get to tell them. I just hope they feel a little fresher than this one does.
6.4/10
Sunday, July 31, 2016
Love Letter to a Saint: A Review of Ignacio de Loyola
written and directed by Paolo Dy
To honor the saint who was largely responsible for the foundation of the Society of Jesus, Jesuit Communications Philippines has produced a film dramatizing his conversion from a Spanish aristocrat obsessed with the notion of a romantic death in battle to a simply, holy man dedicated to serving others in the name of Christ.
Born to an affluent family, Inigo Lopez de Loyola (Andreas Munoz) is the youngest of several children. With his mother having died in childbirth, he is raised by a blacksmith while his father grieves, and as he loses a brother to armed conflict Inigo himself grows up fixated on the idea of a hero's death in battle himself. He nearly gets his wish when, during an invasion of the fortress of Pamplona by French-Navarese forces, his leg is crushed in the course of battle by a falling rampart. As he convalesces, he despairs at the knowledge that, having been crippled by his injury, he will never be a soldier again. While at home, though, he reads of the lives of the saints (which are the only books to be found in the house) and finds a new calling: that of the holy man. He determines to live the simple life of a holy pilgrim, inspired by the example of St. Francis of Assisi. He begins a journey to discover God that will transform not only his own life, but those of the people whose lives he touches with his kindness.
One thing that really struck me about this film was the attention to detail, from Dy's taut script, to the costume design, to the choice of location, this film is truly a labor not only of love but of extremely meticulous planning and execution. It calls to mind another Filipino film which, a little under a year ago, was making waves on social media, Heneral Luna. I am overjoyed to live in an era when passion projects like this, Heneral Luna, and films like Brillante Mendoza's Ma'Rosa, among many others, are being made. Even though they face tall odds in the form of generic Hollywood blockbusters or lowest-common denominator pap, Filipino filmmakers, much like Dy's take on St. Ignatius, hurl themselves into the breach.
As was the case with Heneral Luna, one can see the seams in the film's visual effects, which is to be expected as these filmmakers do not have a whole lot of money to work with, but Dy unfortunately makes the mistake of asking a little too much of his effects team in a particularly stylized sequence in which Inigo faces off against an antagonistic specter who may well be his own tortured subconscious. The result is a little wince-inducing. I also noticed repeatedly throughout the film that the camera would, at somewhat inopportune moments, suddenly lose focus. I think I get what Dy was going for in those sequences, but I feel his timing might have been a bit off.
While I appreciated the script's reverence towards the title character, I was a little disappointed by how relatively little attention was paid to how he was antagonized by the Catholic Church in the film's third act. This a period in the Church's history where they were basically killing people for the simple act of disagreeing with them. To be honest, this was, for me at least, a wasted opportunity, especially considering that the current Pope is a Jesuit and much could therefore have been made about St. Ignatius winning over his doubters. As cinematic bad guys go, one couldn't have gotten juicier material than the Inquisition-era Catholic Church; they're right up there with the Nazis in terms of sheer malevolence. While the ending had all the requisite beats of a good confrontation, I feel it wasn't quite as emotionally charged as it should have been.
Also, while the script was quite lyrical at times, it didn't quite have the gut-punch that I thought a film championing Ignacio's impact on Christianity should have, and there weren't quite any zingers like Antonio Luna's now-famous line: "You're like virgins believing in the love of a whore." Interestingly enough, one particularly engaging scene for me was one in which the newly-converted Inigo, upon a visit to a brothel instigated by his brother Beltran (Lucas Fuica) and cousin and confidant Xanti (Javier Godino), rather than lie with the woman he has been presented, actually talks to her and shows her compassion she has never before known in her life. It's a quiet, but moving scene, and Munoz and the actress who played the prostitute Ana (whose name unfortunately escapes me and is not listed on the internet), really sell it well. The film, unfortunately, does not have quite enough scenes like this, which could have helped it more than the somewhat generic battle sequence in the beginning and the repeated focus on Ignacio's daddy issues.
It's really a shame, because lead actor Munoz really gives his all in essaying this role. While there were other notables in the cast like Godino as Xanti, Fuica as Don Beltran, Julio Perillan as Father Sanchez and a whole host of other very capable Spanish actors selected for their skill and their facility with the English language, Munoz carries the film, just as John Arcilla very ably anchored Heneral Luna last year. Unfortunately, though, there were some actors with small but pivotal roles whose grasp of English was apparently so bad that Dy made the creative decision to have Filipino actors dub their dialogue, and in one case the substitution was embarrassingly obvious. In the other case, fortunately, the swap was a bit muted.
One thing that definitely wasn't muted, and which deserves prominent mention is Ryan Cayabyab's soaring musical score, which for me is easily a highlight of this film. I really appreciated how he employed a full orchestra and choir for some of the film's more "epic" scenes but did not hesitate to have solos by guitarists or other instrumentalists during the film's more intimate moments.
Ultimately, I appreciate this film for having quite a bit of heart, even for all its flaws, though I can't quite be sure if people not at all familiar with St. Ignatius would really get into it. Still, one compliment I can pay the film is this; I walked into it having had minimal sleep in the last 24 hours and I was fully expecting to doze off at some point into it, but I didn't sleep a wink. I can't even say that about the action film Jason Bourne, which I will review next.
8/10
To honor the saint who was largely responsible for the foundation of the Society of Jesus, Jesuit Communications Philippines has produced a film dramatizing his conversion from a Spanish aristocrat obsessed with the notion of a romantic death in battle to a simply, holy man dedicated to serving others in the name of Christ.
Born to an affluent family, Inigo Lopez de Loyola (Andreas Munoz) is the youngest of several children. With his mother having died in childbirth, he is raised by a blacksmith while his father grieves, and as he loses a brother to armed conflict Inigo himself grows up fixated on the idea of a hero's death in battle himself. He nearly gets his wish when, during an invasion of the fortress of Pamplona by French-Navarese forces, his leg is crushed in the course of battle by a falling rampart. As he convalesces, he despairs at the knowledge that, having been crippled by his injury, he will never be a soldier again. While at home, though, he reads of the lives of the saints (which are the only books to be found in the house) and finds a new calling: that of the holy man. He determines to live the simple life of a holy pilgrim, inspired by the example of St. Francis of Assisi. He begins a journey to discover God that will transform not only his own life, but those of the people whose lives he touches with his kindness.
One thing that really struck me about this film was the attention to detail, from Dy's taut script, to the costume design, to the choice of location, this film is truly a labor not only of love but of extremely meticulous planning and execution. It calls to mind another Filipino film which, a little under a year ago, was making waves on social media, Heneral Luna. I am overjoyed to live in an era when passion projects like this, Heneral Luna, and films like Brillante Mendoza's Ma'Rosa, among many others, are being made. Even though they face tall odds in the form of generic Hollywood blockbusters or lowest-common denominator pap, Filipino filmmakers, much like Dy's take on St. Ignatius, hurl themselves into the breach.
As was the case with Heneral Luna, one can see the seams in the film's visual effects, which is to be expected as these filmmakers do not have a whole lot of money to work with, but Dy unfortunately makes the mistake of asking a little too much of his effects team in a particularly stylized sequence in which Inigo faces off against an antagonistic specter who may well be his own tortured subconscious. The result is a little wince-inducing. I also noticed repeatedly throughout the film that the camera would, at somewhat inopportune moments, suddenly lose focus. I think I get what Dy was going for in those sequences, but I feel his timing might have been a bit off.
While I appreciated the script's reverence towards the title character, I was a little disappointed by how relatively little attention was paid to how he was antagonized by the Catholic Church in the film's third act. This a period in the Church's history where they were basically killing people for the simple act of disagreeing with them. To be honest, this was, for me at least, a wasted opportunity, especially considering that the current Pope is a Jesuit and much could therefore have been made about St. Ignatius winning over his doubters. As cinematic bad guys go, one couldn't have gotten juicier material than the Inquisition-era Catholic Church; they're right up there with the Nazis in terms of sheer malevolence. While the ending had all the requisite beats of a good confrontation, I feel it wasn't quite as emotionally charged as it should have been.
Also, while the script was quite lyrical at times, it didn't quite have the gut-punch that I thought a film championing Ignacio's impact on Christianity should have, and there weren't quite any zingers like Antonio Luna's now-famous line: "You're like virgins believing in the love of a whore." Interestingly enough, one particularly engaging scene for me was one in which the newly-converted Inigo, upon a visit to a brothel instigated by his brother Beltran (Lucas Fuica) and cousin and confidant Xanti (Javier Godino), rather than lie with the woman he has been presented, actually talks to her and shows her compassion she has never before known in her life. It's a quiet, but moving scene, and Munoz and the actress who played the prostitute Ana (whose name unfortunately escapes me and is not listed on the internet), really sell it well. The film, unfortunately, does not have quite enough scenes like this, which could have helped it more than the somewhat generic battle sequence in the beginning and the repeated focus on Ignacio's daddy issues.
It's really a shame, because lead actor Munoz really gives his all in essaying this role. While there were other notables in the cast like Godino as Xanti, Fuica as Don Beltran, Julio Perillan as Father Sanchez and a whole host of other very capable Spanish actors selected for their skill and their facility with the English language, Munoz carries the film, just as John Arcilla very ably anchored Heneral Luna last year. Unfortunately, though, there were some actors with small but pivotal roles whose grasp of English was apparently so bad that Dy made the creative decision to have Filipino actors dub their dialogue, and in one case the substitution was embarrassingly obvious. In the other case, fortunately, the swap was a bit muted.
One thing that definitely wasn't muted, and which deserves prominent mention is Ryan Cayabyab's soaring musical score, which for me is easily a highlight of this film. I really appreciated how he employed a full orchestra and choir for some of the film's more "epic" scenes but did not hesitate to have solos by guitarists or other instrumentalists during the film's more intimate moments.
Ultimately, I appreciate this film for having quite a bit of heart, even for all its flaws, though I can't quite be sure if people not at all familiar with St. Ignatius would really get into it. Still, one compliment I can pay the film is this; I walked into it having had minimal sleep in the last 24 hours and I was fully expecting to doze off at some point into it, but I didn't sleep a wink. I can't even say that about the action film Jason Bourne, which I will review next.
8/10
Saturday, July 30, 2016
Abrams Passes the Baton: A Review of Star Trek Beyond
directed by Justin Lin
written by Simon Pegg and Doug Jung
I may be in the minority, but I quite honestly liked JJ Abrams' resuscitation of the Star Trek film franchise better than his record-shattering sequel to the Star Wars saga. I can even go as far as to say I enjoyed the much-maligned Star Trek Into Darkness which is now described as a poorly-realized remake of the well-loved Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. The decision to watch Star Trek Beyond, even with a new director at the helm, was a bit of a no-brainer.
In this new film, Captain James T. Kirk (Chris Pine) and the crew of the USS Enterprise are halfway through their five-year mission to explore deep space, and feelings of boredom and monotony have started to set in, at least as far as Kirk is concerned. The crew dock at the space station Yorktown to fill up on supplies, and Kirk finds himself at a bit of a crossroads, with a chance at a juicy promotion that would mean leaving the Enterprise, while his First Officer Spock (Zachary Quinto) learns sad news that influences a decision on his part that will also entail him leaving the Enterprise. This is all put on hold, though, when the Yorktown receives a mysterious distress call from an uncharted nebula. The Enterprise responds, and disaster ensues, with the mysterious and brutal Krall (Idris Elba) attacking them. Kirk, Spock, Bones (Karl Urban), Uhura (Zoe Saldana), Sulu (John Cho), Chekhov (the late Anton Yelchin), and Scotty (Simon Pegg, pulling double-duty as screenwriter here), will have to summon all of their skills to deal with this unique and formidable threat, though they will have help from the fierce and clever Jaylah (Sophie Boutella). There is more, however to Krall than meets the eye.
While Lin's hyperkinetic approach to narrative, honed on several Fast and Furious movies did not really rock my world the way Abrams' did seven years ago, I found the film enjoyable enough and that whatever over-the-top excesses Lin may have indulged (Kirk's motorcycle riding comes to mind as well as a couple of others) were tempered by the script Pegg co-wrote with Doug Jung, which endeavors to preserve the Abrams vibe and even maintain a sense of connection to the original series of films. The opening scene, in which Kirk basically laments how monotonous his mission has come to feel, and the quieter moments, like Kirk and McCoy toasting over an empty glass of Chekhov's vodka (which proved to be oddly prescient given Yelchin's death just a month before the film's release), provide moments for the characters to shine. Also, while there is still quite a daredevil in him as evidenced by his motorcycle scene, this Kirk is a bit less brash than he was in the first couple of movies, having benefited quite a bit from his experience as a starship captain.
As always it's a challenge to give screen time to the ensemble, but Lin and his writers have managed this quite handily by having the characters pair off midway through the film, Kirk with Chekhov, Scotty with the newbie Jaylah, and most notably Spock with Bones. Karl Urban's take on the character popularized by DeForest Kelley is one of things I quite like about this new iteration of the franchise.
Elba's Krall is an improvement over Benedict Cumberbatch's Khan from the last film and Eric Bana's Nero from the first in the new series, and while neither set a particularly high bar to hurdle (particularly Bana), Elba vests this role with as much menace as he can muster, and his performance is especially impressive considering the amount of makeup he has to act through.
I really like the fact that the whole reboot concept has allowed audiences to see the world of the 1960s television series with updated visual effects, and the Yorktown sequence is particularly rewarding in this regard; the cityscape in space is a wonder to behold, and while computer-generated imagery is a dime-a-dozen these days, here it was put to particularly good use.
I still liked 2009's reboot the best, but this film, to my mind at least, does a good job of keeping the franchise going.
7.5/10
written by Simon Pegg and Doug Jung
I may be in the minority, but I quite honestly liked JJ Abrams' resuscitation of the Star Trek film franchise better than his record-shattering sequel to the Star Wars saga. I can even go as far as to say I enjoyed the much-maligned Star Trek Into Darkness which is now described as a poorly-realized remake of the well-loved Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. The decision to watch Star Trek Beyond, even with a new director at the helm, was a bit of a no-brainer.
In this new film, Captain James T. Kirk (Chris Pine) and the crew of the USS Enterprise are halfway through their five-year mission to explore deep space, and feelings of boredom and monotony have started to set in, at least as far as Kirk is concerned. The crew dock at the space station Yorktown to fill up on supplies, and Kirk finds himself at a bit of a crossroads, with a chance at a juicy promotion that would mean leaving the Enterprise, while his First Officer Spock (Zachary Quinto) learns sad news that influences a decision on his part that will also entail him leaving the Enterprise. This is all put on hold, though, when the Yorktown receives a mysterious distress call from an uncharted nebula. The Enterprise responds, and disaster ensues, with the mysterious and brutal Krall (Idris Elba) attacking them. Kirk, Spock, Bones (Karl Urban), Uhura (Zoe Saldana), Sulu (John Cho), Chekhov (the late Anton Yelchin), and Scotty (Simon Pegg, pulling double-duty as screenwriter here), will have to summon all of their skills to deal with this unique and formidable threat, though they will have help from the fierce and clever Jaylah (Sophie Boutella). There is more, however to Krall than meets the eye.
While Lin's hyperkinetic approach to narrative, honed on several Fast and Furious movies did not really rock my world the way Abrams' did seven years ago, I found the film enjoyable enough and that whatever over-the-top excesses Lin may have indulged (Kirk's motorcycle riding comes to mind as well as a couple of others) were tempered by the script Pegg co-wrote with Doug Jung, which endeavors to preserve the Abrams vibe and even maintain a sense of connection to the original series of films. The opening scene, in which Kirk basically laments how monotonous his mission has come to feel, and the quieter moments, like Kirk and McCoy toasting over an empty glass of Chekhov's vodka (which proved to be oddly prescient given Yelchin's death just a month before the film's release), provide moments for the characters to shine. Also, while there is still quite a daredevil in him as evidenced by his motorcycle scene, this Kirk is a bit less brash than he was in the first couple of movies, having benefited quite a bit from his experience as a starship captain.
As always it's a challenge to give screen time to the ensemble, but Lin and his writers have managed this quite handily by having the characters pair off midway through the film, Kirk with Chekhov, Scotty with the newbie Jaylah, and most notably Spock with Bones. Karl Urban's take on the character popularized by DeForest Kelley is one of things I quite like about this new iteration of the franchise.
Elba's Krall is an improvement over Benedict Cumberbatch's Khan from the last film and Eric Bana's Nero from the first in the new series, and while neither set a particularly high bar to hurdle (particularly Bana), Elba vests this role with as much menace as he can muster, and his performance is especially impressive considering the amount of makeup he has to act through.
I really like the fact that the whole reboot concept has allowed audiences to see the world of the 1960s television series with updated visual effects, and the Yorktown sequence is particularly rewarding in this regard; the cityscape in space is a wonder to behold, and while computer-generated imagery is a dime-a-dozen these days, here it was put to particularly good use.
I still liked 2009's reboot the best, but this film, to my mind at least, does a good job of keeping the franchise going.
7.5/10
Sunday, July 17, 2016
Who You Gonna Call? A Review of the Ghostbusters Remake
directed by Paul Feig
written by Kate Dippold and Paul Feig
Few films have come into theaters with more concerted efforts by outside forces to ensure their failure than this one. When it was announced that Paul Feig would helm the long-gestating "Ghostbusters" sequel, which eventually metamorphosed into the remake it now is, and that all of the leads would be female, a vocal population of male netizens probably best described as trolls was quite vocal in their outrage and campaigned quite vigorously against this film. Apparently, in the hierarchy of obnoxiousness of fanboys, DC and Marvel fanboys have absolutely nothing on Ghostbusters fanboys in terms of sheer vileness.
Unfortunately for those fanboys, however, this film is nowhere near the train wreck that they were desperately hoping it would be.
Erin Gilbert (Kristen Wiig) is a physics professor at Columbia University just on the brink of acquiring tenure when a little bit of her past comes back to haunt her: a book she co-wrote with her friend and former colleague Abigail Yates (Melissa McCarthy) about the paranormal, a book she thought had never been published, surfaces in the hands of a man (Ed Begley Jr.) who believes a house-turned-museum that he is managing to be haunted. Incensed, Erin confronts Abby, who is continuing her research on the paranormal at a small college with her colleague Jill (Kate McKinnon). Abby agrees to take the book out of circulation as long as Erin introduces her to the man seeking help with his supernatural problem. When the three of them actually find an honest-to-goodness ghost, they are elated, and start pursuing their research more doggedly, and not a moment too soon, as the mysterious Rowan (Neil Casey), a loner working in the basement of a hotel, seems to be actively inviting ghosts from the other side, which include the malevolent spirit of a rich heiress and an electrocuted convict. Erin, Abby and Jill, along with subway ticket seller Patty (Leslie Jones), who volunteers to help them after seeing one of ghosts herself, set out to save the city, and possibly the world, from this supernatural threat, with or without the help of their thoroughly useless assistant Kevin (Chris Hemsworth).
This movie spent the better part of the last three decades in what can politely be described as development hell and the fact that they were able to get it done at all is a minor Hollywood miracle. It's even more impressive that it was as good as it turned out to be.
The storytelling was reasonably taut, the characters gelled well, and the visual effects were a nice update on the ones that appeared in the thirty-two year old original. No new ground was broken here, as the filmmakers basically went for what worked in the original, with the pseudo-science, soft horror and broad comedy, and, thankfully, removed the bit about one of the main characters stalking one of the team's clients. It was a clean-sheet remake; I had half-expected (and hoped for) some kind of torch-passing sequel, but I can understand why the filmmakers decide to just start from scratch. Speaking of passing the torch, though, almost all of the living main cast members (Harold Ramis passed away three years ago) showed up in cameo roles to lend their support. Sigourney Weaver looks awesome; the years have been kind. It was a flawed movie, to be sure, but still a lot of good fun. It does not deserve anywhere near the amount of pre-cooked hatred that was aimed at it.
Oddly enough, what disappointed me about this film was that, as films by Paul Feig starring Melissa McCarthy go, it was rather tame, even taking into account the PG-13 rating that is out of the pair's usual R-18 wheelhouse. I had expected Kristen Wiig to be the "straight" character to McCarthy's zany one, but what I didn't expect was that over the course of the movie, McCarthy would end up playing it straight as well. It's almost as if she can't be as funny without a potty mouth. McKinnon and Jones were absolutely delightful all throughout, though, as was Hemsworth as the clueless Kevin. McKinnon, in particular, was the standout as, apart from being funny, she was also the team's weapons designer, and in that aspect brought some freshness to the movie as they went beyond the traditional proton packs and traps. She's also the star of some pretty snazzy "proton fu" during the film's climax.
Obviously, there's some franchise-building here as the film has a post-credits stinger setting up a sequel, but fortunately, this film stands on its own just fine. If indeed this turns out to be a franchise, it's off to a reasonably decent start.
7/10
written by Kate Dippold and Paul Feig
Few films have come into theaters with more concerted efforts by outside forces to ensure their failure than this one. When it was announced that Paul Feig would helm the long-gestating "Ghostbusters" sequel, which eventually metamorphosed into the remake it now is, and that all of the leads would be female, a vocal population of male netizens probably best described as trolls was quite vocal in their outrage and campaigned quite vigorously against this film. Apparently, in the hierarchy of obnoxiousness of fanboys, DC and Marvel fanboys have absolutely nothing on Ghostbusters fanboys in terms of sheer vileness.
Unfortunately for those fanboys, however, this film is nowhere near the train wreck that they were desperately hoping it would be.
Erin Gilbert (Kristen Wiig) is a physics professor at Columbia University just on the brink of acquiring tenure when a little bit of her past comes back to haunt her: a book she co-wrote with her friend and former colleague Abigail Yates (Melissa McCarthy) about the paranormal, a book she thought had never been published, surfaces in the hands of a man (Ed Begley Jr.) who believes a house-turned-museum that he is managing to be haunted. Incensed, Erin confronts Abby, who is continuing her research on the paranormal at a small college with her colleague Jill (Kate McKinnon). Abby agrees to take the book out of circulation as long as Erin introduces her to the man seeking help with his supernatural problem. When the three of them actually find an honest-to-goodness ghost, they are elated, and start pursuing their research more doggedly, and not a moment too soon, as the mysterious Rowan (Neil Casey), a loner working in the basement of a hotel, seems to be actively inviting ghosts from the other side, which include the malevolent spirit of a rich heiress and an electrocuted convict. Erin, Abby and Jill, along with subway ticket seller Patty (Leslie Jones), who volunteers to help them after seeing one of ghosts herself, set out to save the city, and possibly the world, from this supernatural threat, with or without the help of their thoroughly useless assistant Kevin (Chris Hemsworth).
This movie spent the better part of the last three decades in what can politely be described as development hell and the fact that they were able to get it done at all is a minor Hollywood miracle. It's even more impressive that it was as good as it turned out to be.
The storytelling was reasonably taut, the characters gelled well, and the visual effects were a nice update on the ones that appeared in the thirty-two year old original. No new ground was broken here, as the filmmakers basically went for what worked in the original, with the pseudo-science, soft horror and broad comedy, and, thankfully, removed the bit about one of the main characters stalking one of the team's clients. It was a clean-sheet remake; I had half-expected (and hoped for) some kind of torch-passing sequel, but I can understand why the filmmakers decide to just start from scratch. Speaking of passing the torch, though, almost all of the living main cast members (Harold Ramis passed away three years ago) showed up in cameo roles to lend their support. Sigourney Weaver looks awesome; the years have been kind. It was a flawed movie, to be sure, but still a lot of good fun. It does not deserve anywhere near the amount of pre-cooked hatred that was aimed at it.
Oddly enough, what disappointed me about this film was that, as films by Paul Feig starring Melissa McCarthy go, it was rather tame, even taking into account the PG-13 rating that is out of the pair's usual R-18 wheelhouse. I had expected Kristen Wiig to be the "straight" character to McCarthy's zany one, but what I didn't expect was that over the course of the movie, McCarthy would end up playing it straight as well. It's almost as if she can't be as funny without a potty mouth. McKinnon and Jones were absolutely delightful all throughout, though, as was Hemsworth as the clueless Kevin. McKinnon, in particular, was the standout as, apart from being funny, she was also the team's weapons designer, and in that aspect brought some freshness to the movie as they went beyond the traditional proton packs and traps. She's also the star of some pretty snazzy "proton fu" during the film's climax.
Obviously, there's some franchise-building here as the film has a post-credits stinger setting up a sequel, but fortunately, this film stands on its own just fine. If indeed this turns out to be a franchise, it's off to a reasonably decent start.
7/10
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