directed by Marc Webb
written by Tom Flynn
I had originally planned to make this review my inaugural vlog, but time constraints and a need to get familiar with the format kind of scuttled that, especially since I wanted to get this review out while it was still relevant (which I'm not even sure it is at this point).
Anyway, this film is about a rather unconventional family; boat repairman Frank Adler (Chris Evans) takes care of his niece Mary (McKenna Grace) in a quiet blue-collar neighborhood. After having home-schooled her for several years, Frank decides it's time to send Mary to school, over the objections of motherly neighbor and landlady Roberta Taylor (Octavia Spencer) who doesn't think she'll fit in well. At school, after run-ins with her teacher Bonnie Stevenson (Jenny Slate) and School Principal Davis (Elizabeth Marvel) which prompt a meeting with Frank, the truth comes out: Mary is a math genius, just like her deceased mother, Frank's sister. The school authorities want her moved to a school for gifted children where she can maximize her potential, but Frank wants her to stay put so that she can enjoy a normal childhood. Soon, however, Frank's mother Evelyn (Lindsay Duncan), from whom Frank had been hiding Mary all these years following her mother's suicide, shows up, and a battle for custody, and Mary's future, ensues.
While the movie works off a simple premise and is fairly predictable, family dramas like this aren't about twist endings. A movie like this will rise or fall on the strength of the performance of its actors and from Evans, Grace, Slate, Duncan and Spencer, director Marc Webb, nicely slipping back into indie-auteur mode after the disastrous Amazing Spider-Man 2, coaxes some fairly powerful performances. I don't know if people realize how talented Evans is as an actor; even digitally making him skinny in the first Captain America would not have worked if he hadn't acted the part, and the earnestness he showed there really shines through here. Most important to the story is his chemistry with the precocious McKenna Grace, and the two of them really knock it out of the park. While his romantic chemistry with Slate kind of fall flat, the manner in which he and Duncan play off each other is something really special to watch. In depicting the struggle between Frank and Evelyn, Webb and screenwriter Tom Flynn really try to toe the fine line between family squabbling and a more black-and-white hero-vs-villain struggle, and often find themselves veering a little too much into the latter territory at times, but it still works. Evans and Duncan do a good job of depicting a strained mother and son relationship, but one still sees the vestiges of familial love here and there. Grace is a revelation as the child prodigy Mary, though I don't quite expect her to be the childhood name that Dakota Fanning was in the noughties. I suspect we'll be seeing her again at some point.
It was nice to see Captain America swap his tights and shield for jeans and a workman's tools for a change.
7.5/10
Tuesday, May 16, 2017
Sunday, April 30, 2017
Family Matters: A Review of Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2
written and directed by James Gunn
Three years after James Gunn and his cast and crew showed the world that D-list Marvel characters can sell movie tickets like hotcakes, they've come back with a sequel just as irreverent and zany as the first film, but which actually has something surprisingly meaningful to say about the importance of family.
The film begins in 1980, with a young couple in love driving through Missouri and the man (a de-aged Kurt Russell) showing off to his blushing bride (Laura Haddock) something mysterious he has planted in the soil.
Thirty-four years later and several billion kilometers away, Peter Quill aka Starlord (Chris Pratt) and the rest of the Guardians of the Galaxy, Gamora (Zoe Saldana), Drax (Dave Bautista), Rocket (Bradley Cooper) and Baby Groot (Vin Diesel) perform a job for the Sovereign, a race of golden-skinned perfectionists headed by the imperious Ayesha (Elizabeth Debicki), which involves protecting several large batteries from the Abilisk, a monster with an appetite for the batteries. In exchange, they get Gamora's estranged sister Nebula (Karen Gillan) who has several bounties on her head. All is going well when the larcenous Rocket decides he can't help himself and decides to steal smaller versions of the very batteries the Guardians were supposed to be protecting, thus bringing the wrath of the Sovereign down upon them. All looks lost for Starlord and his crew when a mysterious craft saves them from certain annihilation. In that craft just happens to be the man from the beginning of the film (a properly aged Kurt Russell this time), who introduces himself as Ego, Peter's father. Ego takes Peter, Gamora and Drax to his home planet, where they meet Mantis (Pom Klementieff) an empath who knows more about Ego than she lets on at first, while Rocket and Baby Groot stay behind on the planet where their ship has crashed to keep watch on the captured Nebula and to repair the ship.
Ayesha, however, is keen on revenge, and thus hires Yondu (Michael Rooker) to bring the Guardians in. Yondu has his own problems; he has just been excommunicated from his group, the Ravagers by their supreme leader Stakar (Sylvester Stallone) for some transgression involving the trafficking of children, and has to deal with the mutinous Taserface (Chris Sullivan).
For Peter, meeting his dad is a wish come true, but he's got quite a few questions, and he may not like the answers to some of them.
The first movie was an unabashedly buoyant affair, and this one continues that tradition, though not quite with the same effect. I found myself pleasantly surprised by the way the family dynamics played out in the film. There's the obvious father-and-son dynamic between Peter and his dad Ego, the sister dynamic between Gamora and Nebula, and the whole dysfunctional family vibe of the Guardians in general, but there were some surprises along the way as the film talked about how growing up without a family can affect someone, specifically the likes of Rocket and Yondu. It was the latter's arc which was surprisingly poignant as the nature of his relationship with Peter, as well as the reasons behind his decision not to deliver an eight-year-old Peter to his father like he was hired to do, become much clearer in this film.
As a father of four I was particularly affected by this movie and found myself relating most of all to Kurt Russell's Ego and actually taking the time to examine my parenting, especially given that I have two children navigating adolescence.
Ego is an aptly named character, and the fanboys who may have been annoyed that he wasn't introduced as a giant planet (considering that he is called "The Living Planet" in the comics) will be relieved to see that this aspect of the character is covered, although the visual representation of the character's most basic "core" is a little goofy. The thing is, he's the avatar for parents everywhere who think they want the best for their kids but are really just projecting their own desires for greatness onto them. I don't dare go any further lest I spoil plot points.
For me, though, some of Marvel's usual issues here, that of a lack of decent bad guys or multi-dimensional, strong female characters, are quite adequately addressed here.
The visuals are noticeably more elaborate this time around. The action sequences are definitely on a grander scale with the opening battle with the Abilisk setting the tone for how things will play out, and they just get better from that point onward. I confess to being a little disappointed that I didn't get to see more of Gamora or Nebula kicking butt in hand-to-hand sequences, or more dogfights featuring the Milano, but there was more than enough action in other aspects to make up for whatever the film was lacking. For me, though the visual money shots were on Ego's drop-dead gorgeous planet, which in many of the shots looks like the kind of place I'd like to go when I die.
I can't completely lavish this film with praise, though; some of the writing disagreed with me. It's explained to an extent that Rocket does boneheaded things like steal batteries from his employers because he is who he is, but it didn't sit too well with me. There were also other gaffes in the writing that just came across as illogical to me, like how it took the Ravagers several decades to get angry with Yondu for his trafficking activities considering that the last child he trafficked was Quill, something like twenty-odd years earlier. I also had a beef with one of the central aspects of the marketing, which had to do with Rocket's makeshift bomb. Why on earth did he put a button that could destroy everyone, considering he was the one who made the bomb? It seemed like a lot of writing solely in service of a joke that wasn't all that funny.
Still, notwithstanding some issues I had with Gunn's writing and storytelling rhythm I think this movie hit all of its key storytelling beats. It's not the corporate product some of the more cynical reviewers make it out to be, and while it's a far cry from the best the Marvel Cinematic Universe has had to offer and doesn't quite live up to its off-the-wall predecessor, it's still a worthy addition to the canon. Also, it has the added bonus of not beating viewers over the head with the impending "Infinity War" mega-crossover film just on the horizon.
8/10
Three years after James Gunn and his cast and crew showed the world that D-list Marvel characters can sell movie tickets like hotcakes, they've come back with a sequel just as irreverent and zany as the first film, but which actually has something surprisingly meaningful to say about the importance of family.
The film begins in 1980, with a young couple in love driving through Missouri and the man (a de-aged Kurt Russell) showing off to his blushing bride (Laura Haddock) something mysterious he has planted in the soil.
Thirty-four years later and several billion kilometers away, Peter Quill aka Starlord (Chris Pratt) and the rest of the Guardians of the Galaxy, Gamora (Zoe Saldana), Drax (Dave Bautista), Rocket (Bradley Cooper) and Baby Groot (Vin Diesel) perform a job for the Sovereign, a race of golden-skinned perfectionists headed by the imperious Ayesha (Elizabeth Debicki), which involves protecting several large batteries from the Abilisk, a monster with an appetite for the batteries. In exchange, they get Gamora's estranged sister Nebula (Karen Gillan) who has several bounties on her head. All is going well when the larcenous Rocket decides he can't help himself and decides to steal smaller versions of the very batteries the Guardians were supposed to be protecting, thus bringing the wrath of the Sovereign down upon them. All looks lost for Starlord and his crew when a mysterious craft saves them from certain annihilation. In that craft just happens to be the man from the beginning of the film (a properly aged Kurt Russell this time), who introduces himself as Ego, Peter's father. Ego takes Peter, Gamora and Drax to his home planet, where they meet Mantis (Pom Klementieff) an empath who knows more about Ego than she lets on at first, while Rocket and Baby Groot stay behind on the planet where their ship has crashed to keep watch on the captured Nebula and to repair the ship.
Ayesha, however, is keen on revenge, and thus hires Yondu (Michael Rooker) to bring the Guardians in. Yondu has his own problems; he has just been excommunicated from his group, the Ravagers by their supreme leader Stakar (Sylvester Stallone) for some transgression involving the trafficking of children, and has to deal with the mutinous Taserface (Chris Sullivan).
For Peter, meeting his dad is a wish come true, but he's got quite a few questions, and he may not like the answers to some of them.
The first movie was an unabashedly buoyant affair, and this one continues that tradition, though not quite with the same effect. I found myself pleasantly surprised by the way the family dynamics played out in the film. There's the obvious father-and-son dynamic between Peter and his dad Ego, the sister dynamic between Gamora and Nebula, and the whole dysfunctional family vibe of the Guardians in general, but there were some surprises along the way as the film talked about how growing up without a family can affect someone, specifically the likes of Rocket and Yondu. It was the latter's arc which was surprisingly poignant as the nature of his relationship with Peter, as well as the reasons behind his decision not to deliver an eight-year-old Peter to his father like he was hired to do, become much clearer in this film.
As a father of four I was particularly affected by this movie and found myself relating most of all to Kurt Russell's Ego and actually taking the time to examine my parenting, especially given that I have two children navigating adolescence.
Ego is an aptly named character, and the fanboys who may have been annoyed that he wasn't introduced as a giant planet (considering that he is called "The Living Planet" in the comics) will be relieved to see that this aspect of the character is covered, although the visual representation of the character's most basic "core" is a little goofy. The thing is, he's the avatar for parents everywhere who think they want the best for their kids but are really just projecting their own desires for greatness onto them. I don't dare go any further lest I spoil plot points.
For me, though, some of Marvel's usual issues here, that of a lack of decent bad guys or multi-dimensional, strong female characters, are quite adequately addressed here.
The visuals are noticeably more elaborate this time around. The action sequences are definitely on a grander scale with the opening battle with the Abilisk setting the tone for how things will play out, and they just get better from that point onward. I confess to being a little disappointed that I didn't get to see more of Gamora or Nebula kicking butt in hand-to-hand sequences, or more dogfights featuring the Milano, but there was more than enough action in other aspects to make up for whatever the film was lacking. For me, though the visual money shots were on Ego's drop-dead gorgeous planet, which in many of the shots looks like the kind of place I'd like to go when I die.
I can't completely lavish this film with praise, though; some of the writing disagreed with me. It's explained to an extent that Rocket does boneheaded things like steal batteries from his employers because he is who he is, but it didn't sit too well with me. There were also other gaffes in the writing that just came across as illogical to me, like how it took the Ravagers several decades to get angry with Yondu for his trafficking activities considering that the last child he trafficked was Quill, something like twenty-odd years earlier. I also had a beef with one of the central aspects of the marketing, which had to do with Rocket's makeshift bomb. Why on earth did he put a button that could destroy everyone, considering he was the one who made the bomb? It seemed like a lot of writing solely in service of a joke that wasn't all that funny.
Still, notwithstanding some issues I had with Gunn's writing and storytelling rhythm I think this movie hit all of its key storytelling beats. It's not the corporate product some of the more cynical reviewers make it out to be, and while it's a far cry from the best the Marvel Cinematic Universe has had to offer and doesn't quite live up to its off-the-wall predecessor, it's still a worthy addition to the canon. Also, it has the added bonus of not beating viewers over the head with the impending "Infinity War" mega-crossover film just on the horizon.
8/10
Sunday, March 19, 2017
Enchanté: A Review of Beauty and the Beast
directed by Bill Condon
written by Stephen Chbosky and Evan Spiliotopoulos
The tale as old as time gets a new treatment as Walt Disney Pictures releases yet another live-action update of one of its animated classics, arguably one of its most beloved in Beauty and the Beast.
This story is virtually identical to that of the 1991 animated film, which in turn was based loosely on the fairy tale by Jeanne Marie Leprince de Beaumont. A selfish prince (Dan Stevens) is cursed by an enchantress (Hattie Morahan), who transforms him into a monstrous beast, and all his servants (who are apparently guilty by association) into magical housewares. He is given a magical rose, and the opportunity to break the curse, if he can love and earn the love of another before the last petal falls. Otherwise, he shall remain a beast forever.
Years later, the old inventor Maurice (Kevin Kline) and his daughter Belle (Emma Watson), move into a quaint village in the French countryside where Belle, a literate and bright young girl, is an anomaly among the simple country folk, who don't think a woman should be reading. Among them is the arrogant Gaston (Luke Evans) perpetually accompanied by his sidekick and number one fan LeFou (Josh Gad) who wants to mary Belle. Maurice goes on a trip, and Belle asks him to bring her back a rose. He gets lost in the woods and finds himself at the door of the cursed prince's enchanted castle. He plucks a rose from the castle's hedges and the prince accosts him and throws him in prison, though his horse escapes. The horse makes his way to Belle, who goes to the castle and takes her father's place as the beast's prisoner. As Belle spends time with the Beast and his staff, she learns of their plight, and of the curse. What she doesn't know is that she could be key to breaking it.
At the very outset, I was struck by how much thought went into writing the script for this remake; while they clearly strove to be as faithful to the animated original as possible, it's clear that the writers took note of all the gaffes in storytelling logic that were littered all throughout the original film, first and foremost being: if he's a prince, then how is it no one even knows he exists? (Answer: the enchantress made everyone forget about him, his servants and their entire history) There were a number of other questions answered along the way, too, like why would the enchantress curse an 11-year-old (answer: he's of the age of majority when cursed here, and it is left open ended as to how long the enchantment has lasted), why the heck does Belle borrow a book from a book STORE (answer: she borrows them from a church), how the heck does Belle lift the stricken Beast off the ground to get him back to his castle after he's been savaged by wolves (answer: she gets him to stand up) and even one involving the film's climax, which I won't spoil even though most people who'll read this review will no doubt have seen the original. I also appreciated how the writers reincorporated the father's act of picking a flower into the story; this was part of the original fairy tale but was left out of the 1991 film. It added an element of whimsy to the film which is, after all, still a fairy tale.
Not all of the rewriting works, though; efforts to make Evans' Gaston (more on him later) less cartoonish just make the dialogue a bit awkward, and backstory about both the prince's and Belle's mothers feels somewhat shoehorned in. It's clear enough, though, that a lot of these little touches were added to make Belle's and the prince's inevitable mutual affection seem less like the product of Stockholm Syndrome. Overall, I appreciated the effort to try and make the movie impervious to an "Honest Trailer."
Of course, writing is but one component of the movie, and a property as beloved as this one will truly rise and fall on the performances of the actors. The good news is that Emma Watson turns in a spirited performance as Belle, one for which she will no doubt be remembered fondly by millions of fans of the original film. She really captures the main qualities of the character: her Belle is capable, courageous and compassionate. The only problem for me was that, well, I don't think Watson sings very well. Stevens does a commendable job as the Beast, even working through all of the computer-generated, motion-captured imagery, and more importantly his chemistry with Watson works wonderfully. For me, he still doesn't quite evoke the spirit of the unnamed prince's tortured soul quite as well as Glen Keane's magnificent animated creation did twenty-six years ago, but he certainly gives it the old college try.
I wasn't a big fan, unfortunately of Luke Evans' take on Gaston. He isn't quite alpha-male macho enough, or funny enough in comparison to his animated predecessor. Gaston was one of the broader characters in Disney's villains catalog, and a well-aimed shot at the rampant sexism that prevailed both in Hollywood and society back in 1991. At a time when the President of the United States is basically every cartoon villain ever put together, Disney missed out on a golden opportunity to make their bad guy a consummate, no-holds-barred boor like Donald Trump. They already had a pretty strong template in the original Gaston, voiced to hilarious perfection by Richard White, and then they went and watered him down. To be honest, I had no problem whatsoever with Josh Gad's LeFou being openly gay; I thought Disney's act of making one of their most entertaining villains shockingly bland was the real sin here.
Ewan McGregor, Ian McKellen, Emma Thompson, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Audra McDonald, Nathan Mack and Stanley Tucci, as the cursed staff, who have been transformed into various household implements do solid work in comparison to the likes of Jerry Orbach, David Odgen Stiers and Angela Lansbury, even if McGregor's take on Be Our Guest doesn't quite measure up to the late Orbach's original rendition, due in equal parts to his vocals and to some rather dodgy computer-generated imagery.
And that brings me to the next problem of the film: after the visual triumph that Jon Favreau's The Jungle Book proved to be, I had hoped that Disney had gotten the art of translating its traditional hand-drawn work into computer-generated imagery down pat, but that was definitely not the case with this film. Considering the money poured into this film, the distinctly cartoony CGI was extremely disappointing, especially considering that they resorted to the tired old trick of shrouding much of the CGI in darkness. To be fair, though, the effort invested in bringing the Beast to life paid off quite well.
As for the music, with Watson being kind of "meh" in the singing department and Evans being king of "meh" overall, the musical numbers, which are a crucial component of this film, were somewhat compromised, especially Belle's opening number as well as Gaston's number in the tavern. Alan Menken and Tim Rice give us a number of new songs, but none of them really made an impression on me, with the exception of the relatively low-key song that they gave to Kevin Kline's Maurice, who didn't have any musical numbers in the animated film. It was the only song on the soundtrack that felt like it lent the film a human element and wasn't just tacked on to sell more soundtrack albums/downloads. Menken expanded quite a bit on the original film's score, especially given the extended running time, and it was nice that he wasn't just content to recycle old themes.
Overall, it's a respectable re-imagining of the animated film, but if I'm honest, given how high Disney set the bar with The Jungle Book, and considering the pedigree of the 1991 classic, the first ever animated film to be nominated for an Academy Award for Best Picture, back when they only nominated five movies at a time, they owed us viewers quite a bit more than "respectable."
6.5/10
written by Stephen Chbosky and Evan Spiliotopoulos
The tale as old as time gets a new treatment as Walt Disney Pictures releases yet another live-action update of one of its animated classics, arguably one of its most beloved in Beauty and the Beast.
This story is virtually identical to that of the 1991 animated film, which in turn was based loosely on the fairy tale by Jeanne Marie Leprince de Beaumont. A selfish prince (Dan Stevens) is cursed by an enchantress (Hattie Morahan), who transforms him into a monstrous beast, and all his servants (who are apparently guilty by association) into magical housewares. He is given a magical rose, and the opportunity to break the curse, if he can love and earn the love of another before the last petal falls. Otherwise, he shall remain a beast forever.
Years later, the old inventor Maurice (Kevin Kline) and his daughter Belle (Emma Watson), move into a quaint village in the French countryside where Belle, a literate and bright young girl, is an anomaly among the simple country folk, who don't think a woman should be reading. Among them is the arrogant Gaston (Luke Evans) perpetually accompanied by his sidekick and number one fan LeFou (Josh Gad) who wants to mary Belle. Maurice goes on a trip, and Belle asks him to bring her back a rose. He gets lost in the woods and finds himself at the door of the cursed prince's enchanted castle. He plucks a rose from the castle's hedges and the prince accosts him and throws him in prison, though his horse escapes. The horse makes his way to Belle, who goes to the castle and takes her father's place as the beast's prisoner. As Belle spends time with the Beast and his staff, she learns of their plight, and of the curse. What she doesn't know is that she could be key to breaking it.
At the very outset, I was struck by how much thought went into writing the script for this remake; while they clearly strove to be as faithful to the animated original as possible, it's clear that the writers took note of all the gaffes in storytelling logic that were littered all throughout the original film, first and foremost being: if he's a prince, then how is it no one even knows he exists? (Answer: the enchantress made everyone forget about him, his servants and their entire history) There were a number of other questions answered along the way, too, like why would the enchantress curse an 11-year-old (answer: he's of the age of majority when cursed here, and it is left open ended as to how long the enchantment has lasted), why the heck does Belle borrow a book from a book STORE (answer: she borrows them from a church), how the heck does Belle lift the stricken Beast off the ground to get him back to his castle after he's been savaged by wolves (answer: she gets him to stand up) and even one involving the film's climax, which I won't spoil even though most people who'll read this review will no doubt have seen the original. I also appreciated how the writers reincorporated the father's act of picking a flower into the story; this was part of the original fairy tale but was left out of the 1991 film. It added an element of whimsy to the film which is, after all, still a fairy tale.
Not all of the rewriting works, though; efforts to make Evans' Gaston (more on him later) less cartoonish just make the dialogue a bit awkward, and backstory about both the prince's and Belle's mothers feels somewhat shoehorned in. It's clear enough, though, that a lot of these little touches were added to make Belle's and the prince's inevitable mutual affection seem less like the product of Stockholm Syndrome. Overall, I appreciated the effort to try and make the movie impervious to an "Honest Trailer."
Of course, writing is but one component of the movie, and a property as beloved as this one will truly rise and fall on the performances of the actors. The good news is that Emma Watson turns in a spirited performance as Belle, one for which she will no doubt be remembered fondly by millions of fans of the original film. She really captures the main qualities of the character: her Belle is capable, courageous and compassionate. The only problem for me was that, well, I don't think Watson sings very well. Stevens does a commendable job as the Beast, even working through all of the computer-generated, motion-captured imagery, and more importantly his chemistry with Watson works wonderfully. For me, he still doesn't quite evoke the spirit of the unnamed prince's tortured soul quite as well as Glen Keane's magnificent animated creation did twenty-six years ago, but he certainly gives it the old college try.
I wasn't a big fan, unfortunately of Luke Evans' take on Gaston. He isn't quite alpha-male macho enough, or funny enough in comparison to his animated predecessor. Gaston was one of the broader characters in Disney's villains catalog, and a well-aimed shot at the rampant sexism that prevailed both in Hollywood and society back in 1991. At a time when the President of the United States is basically every cartoon villain ever put together, Disney missed out on a golden opportunity to make their bad guy a consummate, no-holds-barred boor like Donald Trump. They already had a pretty strong template in the original Gaston, voiced to hilarious perfection by Richard White, and then they went and watered him down. To be honest, I had no problem whatsoever with Josh Gad's LeFou being openly gay; I thought Disney's act of making one of their most entertaining villains shockingly bland was the real sin here.
Ewan McGregor, Ian McKellen, Emma Thompson, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Audra McDonald, Nathan Mack and Stanley Tucci, as the cursed staff, who have been transformed into various household implements do solid work in comparison to the likes of Jerry Orbach, David Odgen Stiers and Angela Lansbury, even if McGregor's take on Be Our Guest doesn't quite measure up to the late Orbach's original rendition, due in equal parts to his vocals and to some rather dodgy computer-generated imagery.
And that brings me to the next problem of the film: after the visual triumph that Jon Favreau's The Jungle Book proved to be, I had hoped that Disney had gotten the art of translating its traditional hand-drawn work into computer-generated imagery down pat, but that was definitely not the case with this film. Considering the money poured into this film, the distinctly cartoony CGI was extremely disappointing, especially considering that they resorted to the tired old trick of shrouding much of the CGI in darkness. To be fair, though, the effort invested in bringing the Beast to life paid off quite well.
As for the music, with Watson being kind of "meh" in the singing department and Evans being king of "meh" overall, the musical numbers, which are a crucial component of this film, were somewhat compromised, especially Belle's opening number as well as Gaston's number in the tavern. Alan Menken and Tim Rice give us a number of new songs, but none of them really made an impression on me, with the exception of the relatively low-key song that they gave to Kevin Kline's Maurice, who didn't have any musical numbers in the animated film. It was the only song on the soundtrack that felt like it lent the film a human element and wasn't just tacked on to sell more soundtrack albums/downloads. Menken expanded quite a bit on the original film's score, especially given the extended running time, and it was nice that he wasn't just content to recycle old themes.
Overall, it's a respectable re-imagining of the animated film, but if I'm honest, given how high Disney set the bar with The Jungle Book, and considering the pedigree of the 1991 classic, the first ever animated film to be nominated for an Academy Award for Best Picture, back when they only nominated five movies at a time, they owed us viewers quite a bit more than "respectable."
6.5/10
End of the Line: A Review of Logan
directed by James Mangold
written by Scott Frank, Michael Green and Mangold
Seventeen years after Hugh Jackman brought the fan-favorite X-Men character Wolverine to life, he finally brings his tenure as the much-beloved character to an end in the unrelentingly bleak, but surprisingly powerful depiction of mutant dystopia that is Logan.
It is the year 2029, just six years after the events of X-Men: Days of Future Past in which Logan, going back in time to 1973, prevented a cataclysmic event from destroying mutantkind, we find Logan (Hugh Jackman) living in Mexico in an abandoned facility with Charles Xavier (Patrick Stewart), a year after a cataclysmic event that has apparently destroyed mutantkind. Apparently mutants just can't catch a break; rather than killer robots, this time mutants, including most, if not all of the X-Men, have been wiped out by no less than Charles Xavier's uncontrollable mutant brain, which apparently has gotten more dangerous as he has aged.
Logan and Xavier would be more than content to live our their lives in seclusion with their fellow mutant/manservant Caliban (Stephen Mercant), with Logan working as a limousine driver and Xavier spending his days either lying down or tending to plants in a collapsed watertower while heavily medicated. Logan's great ambition at this point is to buy a boat where he and Xavier can live the rest of their lives, without posing a danger to anyone.
Things are turned upside-down, though, when the feral Laura (Daphne Keen) is dropped into their lives. A product of illegal experiments, she has more in common with Logan than he realizes, and he, Charles and their new ward soon find themselves on the run from the malevolent Pierce (Boyd Holbrook), his gang of Reavers, and Dr. Zander Rice (Richard E. Grant), the brains behind the project that created Laura.
This marks the second movie in a row I've watched with gut-wrenching violence and I have to say that I wasn't altogether too fond of all the gore. While there was something gratifying about seeing Wolverine go into his berserker rage in the first half of the movie or so, for me the over-the-top violence got pretty old pretty quickly. Also, the little-kid-as-a-murder-machine story device was played out as early as 2010's Kick-Ass. It lost its novelty quite some time ago. Logan's reluctant dad shtick was also better done when Jackman did Real Steel six years ago. Also, the third act final chase scene felt rather clumsily choreographed and edited, and while it was nowhere near as goofy as the climax of Mangold's The Wolverine turned out to be, it deflated quite a bit of the narrative tension.
On the whole, the movie is basically an extended chase scene, and to Mangold's credit his sense of pacing is quite good right up until the last act. His strength is that he evokes a genuine sense of peril. Mutantkind is on the verge of extinction, after all, and no one is safe here. This is the first superhero movie which actually puts lead characters in genuine mortal danger, with actual consequences. That's about as "spoilery" as I'll get.
Another thing I appreciated was the dialogue between Logan and Charles, and how a lot of their conversations about how they had longed to live out their lives. The most moving scene in the movie for me was the one where Xavier is lying in bed, in a farmer's house, and he says out loud that he's had the best day he's had in a long time, even if he feels he doesn't deserve it. It was a moving moment, and what immediately followed it made it all the more tragic. Jackman and Stewart are in top form here, and while awards bodies are notoriously biased against this genre of film I wouldn't be completely surprised if one or both of them snagged some form of recognition for their work on this movie.
For me, the movie's virtue lies in its reflections on growing older and wondering exactly what one has achieved with one's life. That resonated with me quite a bit more than the outlandish action sequences. I genuinely enjoyed the more contemplative moments of the movie where the characters appreciate the value of family, as Logan does at a crucial moment in the film when he says: "So this is what it feels like."
So long, Hugh. Thanks for some great times at the movies with Wolverine!
7.5/10
written by Scott Frank, Michael Green and Mangold
Seventeen years after Hugh Jackman brought the fan-favorite X-Men character Wolverine to life, he finally brings his tenure as the much-beloved character to an end in the unrelentingly bleak, but surprisingly powerful depiction of mutant dystopia that is Logan.
It is the year 2029, just six years after the events of X-Men: Days of Future Past in which Logan, going back in time to 1973, prevented a cataclysmic event from destroying mutantkind, we find Logan (Hugh Jackman) living in Mexico in an abandoned facility with Charles Xavier (Patrick Stewart), a year after a cataclysmic event that has apparently destroyed mutantkind. Apparently mutants just can't catch a break; rather than killer robots, this time mutants, including most, if not all of the X-Men, have been wiped out by no less than Charles Xavier's uncontrollable mutant brain, which apparently has gotten more dangerous as he has aged.
Logan and Xavier would be more than content to live our their lives in seclusion with their fellow mutant/manservant Caliban (Stephen Mercant), with Logan working as a limousine driver and Xavier spending his days either lying down or tending to plants in a collapsed watertower while heavily medicated. Logan's great ambition at this point is to buy a boat where he and Xavier can live the rest of their lives, without posing a danger to anyone.
Things are turned upside-down, though, when the feral Laura (Daphne Keen) is dropped into their lives. A product of illegal experiments, she has more in common with Logan than he realizes, and he, Charles and their new ward soon find themselves on the run from the malevolent Pierce (Boyd Holbrook), his gang of Reavers, and Dr. Zander Rice (Richard E. Grant), the brains behind the project that created Laura.
This marks the second movie in a row I've watched with gut-wrenching violence and I have to say that I wasn't altogether too fond of all the gore. While there was something gratifying about seeing Wolverine go into his berserker rage in the first half of the movie or so, for me the over-the-top violence got pretty old pretty quickly. Also, the little-kid-as-a-murder-machine story device was played out as early as 2010's Kick-Ass. It lost its novelty quite some time ago. Logan's reluctant dad shtick was also better done when Jackman did Real Steel six years ago. Also, the third act final chase scene felt rather clumsily choreographed and edited, and while it was nowhere near as goofy as the climax of Mangold's The Wolverine turned out to be, it deflated quite a bit of the narrative tension.
On the whole, the movie is basically an extended chase scene, and to Mangold's credit his sense of pacing is quite good right up until the last act. His strength is that he evokes a genuine sense of peril. Mutantkind is on the verge of extinction, after all, and no one is safe here. This is the first superhero movie which actually puts lead characters in genuine mortal danger, with actual consequences. That's about as "spoilery" as I'll get.
Another thing I appreciated was the dialogue between Logan and Charles, and how a lot of their conversations about how they had longed to live out their lives. The most moving scene in the movie for me was the one where Xavier is lying in bed, in a farmer's house, and he says out loud that he's had the best day he's had in a long time, even if he feels he doesn't deserve it. It was a moving moment, and what immediately followed it made it all the more tragic. Jackman and Stewart are in top form here, and while awards bodies are notoriously biased against this genre of film I wouldn't be completely surprised if one or both of them snagged some form of recognition for their work on this movie.
For me, the movie's virtue lies in its reflections on growing older and wondering exactly what one has achieved with one's life. That resonated with me quite a bit more than the outlandish action sequences. I genuinely enjoyed the more contemplative moments of the movie where the characters appreciate the value of family, as Logan does at a crucial moment in the film when he says: "So this is what it feels like."
So long, Hugh. Thanks for some great times at the movies with Wolverine!
7.5/10
Thursday, February 16, 2017
Baba Yaga Returns: A Review of John Wick, Chapter 2
directed by Chad Stahelski
written by Derek Kolstad
I'll be honest; I expected so little of the original John Wick, the 2014 sleeper hit, that when it came out in theaters I didn't even bother to see it. For one thing, I had been badly burned by Reeves' disastrous, overpriced action-fantasy 47 Ronin, and from what I saw from the trailers, John Wick really looked like just another run-of-the-mill shoot-'em-up. I ended up getting it on DVD, as I was intrigued by the glowing reviews it had gotten during its theatrical run. With its simple but interesting premise of a retired (and fabled) hitman taking revenge on the son of a Russian mobster who killed his dog and stole his car, and its virtuoso action sequences courtesy of co-directors David Leitch and Chad Stahelski, it won me over and not only did I enjoy it, but I found myself looking forward to its sequel when I first read that they were making one. The Russian mobsters who called him 'Baba Yaga' or 'The Bogeyman' in the first movie may have been terrified by his return, but I was pumped for it.
The film John Wick: Chapter 2 picks up just where its predecessor left off, with the titular retired assassin played by Keanu Reeves having just wiped out an entire Russian gang on account of the mob boss's kid having killed his dog and stolen his car. Wick gets ready to settle back into retirement as he asks his friend Aurelio (John Leguizamo) to patch up his nearly totaled car (the one the Russian mobster's son stole), and prepares to resume grieving for his dead wife Helen (Bridget Moynihan). He takes all of the guns that he dug up from his basement in the first film and cements them over again. No sooner has he done this than a visitor comes calling: Italian mobster Santino D'Antonio (Riccardo Scamarcio) pays John a visit and asks him to do a job. John, wanting to resume retirement, refuses, but there's a bit of a problem; Santino has what is called a marker; it was through him that John was able to leave his life as an assassin behind. To put it differently, Wick owes him, and he's going to collect...or else. Wick's arm having been twisted, he learns that the target is no other than D'Antonio's sister Gianna (Claudia Gerini) who is about to ascend to a prominent position at the "High Table" or basically the top brass of all criminal organizations in the world. John knows he's in for a world of trouble if he does it, but he has no choice, and as a result, all hell breaks loose, and Wick's problems start with his Gianna's bodyguard, a fellow assassin named Cassian (Common), and just keep on getting worse from there. Not even his connections to the assassins' community and the sanctuary of the Continental, headed by Winston (Ian McShane) may be enough to keep him safe from what he has unleashed. He may need a little help from a mysterious figure from his past, the Bowery King (Laurence Fishburne).
These days it's hard to watch a violent movie and have a whole lot of fun; where I live thousands of people have been summarily executed by vigilantes and potentially crooked police officers in the last seven months. Even though John Wick's world is clearly some kind of hyper-reality with its extremely complex underground society of assassins that even has its own currency, I still felt uncomfortable throughout some of the lengthy shooting sequences. It's sort of like an extended version of the hate church massacre in Kingsman: The Secret Service, albeit without the semi-comedic undertone, and that made me uncomfortable way before my own country was drenched in the blood of alleged small-time criminals. Even under the best of circumstances, how many times can one watch Keanu Reeves flip someone over and shoot them in the head and say 'cool!' anyway?
That said, Stahelski and his crew deserve a huge pat on the back for showing audiences what's possible in an action movie. An ex-stuntman and trained martial artist, Stahelski has put his knowledge of how to construct the perfect action scene to good use in this film, particularly in his depiction of the hand-to-hand combat scenes, with the centerpiece of the film being the confrontations between Wick and Cassian, culminating with a brutal knife fight on the New York subway. There are no quick cuts, computer-generated trickery or even wire-fu here; just some meticulous choreography and canny choices of camera angles. The film has a gratifying old-school feel to it, which is easy to appreciate, even amidst the near-pornographic violence. There's more to Stahelski than that, though; his use of visuals here was pretty inventive. The early gunfight in the catacombs of Rome and the climactic confrontation in an art museum filled with mirrors reflecting neon colors were strikingly unconventional set pieces and all the more memorable for it.
What's also interesting is that the non-stop nature of the violence in this movie, which racks an even higher body count than the last one, seems to serve as a sort of commentary on how violence never really ends. Wick does this one last job to be able to leave his life as an assassin for good, only to open up several new cans of worms. Maybe I'm giving screenwriter Derek Kolstad a little too much credit here, but if nothing else he does a commendable job of expanding a story that originally wasn't mean to even have a sequel. Here, as in the previous film, he also gives viewers glimpses into Wick's humanity, and not just by showing his tender affection for his dead wife, but by the fact that he actually spares the lives of a number of characters throughout the film, a decision which may yet prove significant in the future. And yes, minor spoiler: the film definitely sets up a sequel.
Whether it's the directing or the script, though, none of this would have worked without a leading man who was utterly committed, and the filmmakers have it in Keanu Reeves, for whom Stahelski served as a stunt double in The Matrix movies. Keanu's dedication to this role is wondrous to behold, even without the minute-long youtube video showing him shooting three types of guns and consistently hitting targets at a rifle range somewhere in California; Stahelski's aversion to quick cuts means that there is generous exposure of Reeves doing his own shooting, punching, kicking, grappling and throwing, looking all the while like he has The One Ring tucked away somewhere, keeping him from getting even a day older. Granted, I'm pretty sure no one can really accuse Reeves of acting a whole lot in this movie, but as was the case with Jan de Bont's Speed and the Wachowski Siblings' The Matrix (the first one at least) Reeves' real gift as a performer is the ability to let the story drive the action without drawing too much attention to his own shortcomings as a thespian, even when he's the lead character. The role of the taciturn assassin is as smooth a fit for him as the tailored suits his character wears throughout the film.
This film is a rock-solid piece of well-crafted entertainment, though anyone queasy about hardcore violence should probably sit this one out.
8/10
written by Derek Kolstad
I'll be honest; I expected so little of the original John Wick, the 2014 sleeper hit, that when it came out in theaters I didn't even bother to see it. For one thing, I had been badly burned by Reeves' disastrous, overpriced action-fantasy 47 Ronin, and from what I saw from the trailers, John Wick really looked like just another run-of-the-mill shoot-'em-up. I ended up getting it on DVD, as I was intrigued by the glowing reviews it had gotten during its theatrical run. With its simple but interesting premise of a retired (and fabled) hitman taking revenge on the son of a Russian mobster who killed his dog and stole his car, and its virtuoso action sequences courtesy of co-directors David Leitch and Chad Stahelski, it won me over and not only did I enjoy it, but I found myself looking forward to its sequel when I first read that they were making one. The Russian mobsters who called him 'Baba Yaga' or 'The Bogeyman' in the first movie may have been terrified by his return, but I was pumped for it.
The film John Wick: Chapter 2 picks up just where its predecessor left off, with the titular retired assassin played by Keanu Reeves having just wiped out an entire Russian gang on account of the mob boss's kid having killed his dog and stolen his car. Wick gets ready to settle back into retirement as he asks his friend Aurelio (John Leguizamo) to patch up his nearly totaled car (the one the Russian mobster's son stole), and prepares to resume grieving for his dead wife Helen (Bridget Moynihan). He takes all of the guns that he dug up from his basement in the first film and cements them over again. No sooner has he done this than a visitor comes calling: Italian mobster Santino D'Antonio (Riccardo Scamarcio) pays John a visit and asks him to do a job. John, wanting to resume retirement, refuses, but there's a bit of a problem; Santino has what is called a marker; it was through him that John was able to leave his life as an assassin behind. To put it differently, Wick owes him, and he's going to collect...or else. Wick's arm having been twisted, he learns that the target is no other than D'Antonio's sister Gianna (Claudia Gerini) who is about to ascend to a prominent position at the "High Table" or basically the top brass of all criminal organizations in the world. John knows he's in for a world of trouble if he does it, but he has no choice, and as a result, all hell breaks loose, and Wick's problems start with his Gianna's bodyguard, a fellow assassin named Cassian (Common), and just keep on getting worse from there. Not even his connections to the assassins' community and the sanctuary of the Continental, headed by Winston (Ian McShane) may be enough to keep him safe from what he has unleashed. He may need a little help from a mysterious figure from his past, the Bowery King (Laurence Fishburne).
These days it's hard to watch a violent movie and have a whole lot of fun; where I live thousands of people have been summarily executed by vigilantes and potentially crooked police officers in the last seven months. Even though John Wick's world is clearly some kind of hyper-reality with its extremely complex underground society of assassins that even has its own currency, I still felt uncomfortable throughout some of the lengthy shooting sequences. It's sort of like an extended version of the hate church massacre in Kingsman: The Secret Service, albeit without the semi-comedic undertone, and that made me uncomfortable way before my own country was drenched in the blood of alleged small-time criminals. Even under the best of circumstances, how many times can one watch Keanu Reeves flip someone over and shoot them in the head and say 'cool!' anyway?
That said, Stahelski and his crew deserve a huge pat on the back for showing audiences what's possible in an action movie. An ex-stuntman and trained martial artist, Stahelski has put his knowledge of how to construct the perfect action scene to good use in this film, particularly in his depiction of the hand-to-hand combat scenes, with the centerpiece of the film being the confrontations between Wick and Cassian, culminating with a brutal knife fight on the New York subway. There are no quick cuts, computer-generated trickery or even wire-fu here; just some meticulous choreography and canny choices of camera angles. The film has a gratifying old-school feel to it, which is easy to appreciate, even amidst the near-pornographic violence. There's more to Stahelski than that, though; his use of visuals here was pretty inventive. The early gunfight in the catacombs of Rome and the climactic confrontation in an art museum filled with mirrors reflecting neon colors were strikingly unconventional set pieces and all the more memorable for it.
What's also interesting is that the non-stop nature of the violence in this movie, which racks an even higher body count than the last one, seems to serve as a sort of commentary on how violence never really ends. Wick does this one last job to be able to leave his life as an assassin for good, only to open up several new cans of worms. Maybe I'm giving screenwriter Derek Kolstad a little too much credit here, but if nothing else he does a commendable job of expanding a story that originally wasn't mean to even have a sequel. Here, as in the previous film, he also gives viewers glimpses into Wick's humanity, and not just by showing his tender affection for his dead wife, but by the fact that he actually spares the lives of a number of characters throughout the film, a decision which may yet prove significant in the future. And yes, minor spoiler: the film definitely sets up a sequel.
Whether it's the directing or the script, though, none of this would have worked without a leading man who was utterly committed, and the filmmakers have it in Keanu Reeves, for whom Stahelski served as a stunt double in The Matrix movies. Keanu's dedication to this role is wondrous to behold, even without the minute-long youtube video showing him shooting three types of guns and consistently hitting targets at a rifle range somewhere in California; Stahelski's aversion to quick cuts means that there is generous exposure of Reeves doing his own shooting, punching, kicking, grappling and throwing, looking all the while like he has The One Ring tucked away somewhere, keeping him from getting even a day older. Granted, I'm pretty sure no one can really accuse Reeves of acting a whole lot in this movie, but as was the case with Jan de Bont's Speed and the Wachowski Siblings' The Matrix (the first one at least) Reeves' real gift as a performer is the ability to let the story drive the action without drawing too much attention to his own shortcomings as a thespian, even when he's the lead character. The role of the taciturn assassin is as smooth a fit for him as the tailored suits his character wears throughout the film.
This film is a rock-solid piece of well-crafted entertainment, though anyone queasy about hardcore violence should probably sit this one out.
8/10
Thursday, February 9, 2017
Teen Romance in Space (Sort of): A Review of The Space Between Us
directed by Peter Chelsom
written by Allan Loeb, Peter Chelsom, Richard Barton Lewis, Stewart Schill and Tinker Lindsay
As a kid growing up in the 80s I was repeatedly exposed to two things: 1) movies involving visitors from outer space and 2) teen romance movies. Of course, the 1980s following the runaway success of Steven Spielberg's E.T. The Extra Terrestrial, every other movie that came out for much of the remainder of the decade featured benign visitors from another planet. Notable examples, for me, include Cocoon, Flight of the Navigator, Batteries Not Included, and My Stepmother is an Alien, to name but a few. There weren't quite as many teen romance movies that I saw, but they were part of the pop culture landscape as well. Years before Patrick Dempsey set the small screen on fire as "McDreamy," I saw him as the gangly nerd in one or two teen romance movies. John Cusack was a staple of my youth.
Watching The Space Between Us, a teen romance movie about a boy born on Mars (Asa Butterfield) and the earthbound love of his life (Britt Robertson), I found myself distinctly reminded of both those types of 80s movies, and I have to say, for all the film's flaws, I found myself having a genuinely good time.
The film starts with a crew of astronauts being sent on a mission to colonize Mars, a project that's the brainchild of bazillionaire/philanthropist Nathaniel Shepherd (Gary Oldman, looking suspiciously like Richard Branson). The leader of the team (Janet Montgomery) turns out to be pregnant, a fact only discovered while the crew is en route to their destination, and she ends up giving birth on Mars, in their colony dubbed East Texas. The reduced gravity results in her death, while her son, Gardner, survives. Because of the PR nightmare involved in sending a pregnant astronaut into space and having her die, Gardner is kept a secret from the world for 16 years, and raised on Mars by the scientists who colonize East Texas. As a teenager (Butterfield) with irrepressible curiosity, however, he yearns to see the world of his mother's birth, as well as his online (and only) friend, a troubled teenager named Tulsa (Robertson) and the team of scientists who raised him, led by Kendra Wyndham (Carla Gugino) relent. After his skeleton is given carbon fiber reinforcement (don't ask), he rockets off to Earth. His body, which grew up in much lower gravity, almost immediately reacts badly to the new environment, but you can't keep a good teen down, and before long Gardner escapes his quarantine to meet up with Tulsa, whom he recruits for a special mission of his own: to find his father. Unfortunately, with the Earth's gravity constantly wreaking havoc on his body, Gardner is on borrowed time. Still, even borrowed time is enough time to fall in love.
As I write this, this film has received a critical drubbing and has been savaged at the U.S. box office. That said, there's actually a lot to like about this movie, which boasts an impressive cast and really remarkable production value.
Chelsom has an extraordinary eye for beauty, as shown by his brief Mars shots and the shots of Gardner and Tulsa driving cross-country to find his dad which show some truly gorgeous scenery. There's a shot I particularly loved: the two of them are driving en route to Arizona and in the background, the sky is filled with hot-air balloons. Had this movie been better-received, this is one of the shots with which it would have been identified.
Another thing, to my mind, really works is the chemistry between Butterfield, who turns in a truly amiable performance, and Robertson, even though she looks noticeably older than her character's seventeen years. While I could have done without their 80s-ish sex scene, and a lot of their banter kind of fell flat, I did enjoy the back-and-forth between them, and the contrast in their characters, that led them to where everyone knew they were headed. One memorable moment, for me, was one in which Gardner spies Tulsa playing (and singing) a song she composed on an electronic organ in a Costco. There simply weren't enough of these in this film.
And that, ultimately, is the problem. Although the film looks great, its script is littered with so many absurdities and gaffes in simple logic that not even the star-crossed lovers or their supporting thespians Oldman and Gugino can elevate it. The movie asks us to believe that a kid who's never been on Earth, and who is actually infirm, can not only escape quarantine, but then consistently elude the authorities, even with all of the technology at their disposal just by walking and hitching rides. It almost plays out like a running gag throughout the film. Then there's all the pseudo-science about Gardner's terrestrial condition, which makes one wonder why nobody thought this would happen in the first place. It's just a lot of bad writing, which is a shame because the premise was really interesting, and had the film been better constructed the love story, which has shades of Roman Holiday, would have played out a lot better.
I'm ambivalent about recommending this movie to anyone but the most die-hard romantics, but I think it's fair to say that this movie is quite likely to strike a chord with people who remember the young-love stories of the 1980s, which had their fair share of silly scripts.
5.5/10
written by Allan Loeb, Peter Chelsom, Richard Barton Lewis, Stewart Schill and Tinker Lindsay
As a kid growing up in the 80s I was repeatedly exposed to two things: 1) movies involving visitors from outer space and 2) teen romance movies. Of course, the 1980s following the runaway success of Steven Spielberg's E.T. The Extra Terrestrial, every other movie that came out for much of the remainder of the decade featured benign visitors from another planet. Notable examples, for me, include Cocoon, Flight of the Navigator, Batteries Not Included, and My Stepmother is an Alien, to name but a few. There weren't quite as many teen romance movies that I saw, but they were part of the pop culture landscape as well. Years before Patrick Dempsey set the small screen on fire as "McDreamy," I saw him as the gangly nerd in one or two teen romance movies. John Cusack was a staple of my youth.
Watching The Space Between Us, a teen romance movie about a boy born on Mars (Asa Butterfield) and the earthbound love of his life (Britt Robertson), I found myself distinctly reminded of both those types of 80s movies, and I have to say, for all the film's flaws, I found myself having a genuinely good time.
The film starts with a crew of astronauts being sent on a mission to colonize Mars, a project that's the brainchild of bazillionaire/philanthropist Nathaniel Shepherd (Gary Oldman, looking suspiciously like Richard Branson). The leader of the team (Janet Montgomery) turns out to be pregnant, a fact only discovered while the crew is en route to their destination, and she ends up giving birth on Mars, in their colony dubbed East Texas. The reduced gravity results in her death, while her son, Gardner, survives. Because of the PR nightmare involved in sending a pregnant astronaut into space and having her die, Gardner is kept a secret from the world for 16 years, and raised on Mars by the scientists who colonize East Texas. As a teenager (Butterfield) with irrepressible curiosity, however, he yearns to see the world of his mother's birth, as well as his online (and only) friend, a troubled teenager named Tulsa (Robertson) and the team of scientists who raised him, led by Kendra Wyndham (Carla Gugino) relent. After his skeleton is given carbon fiber reinforcement (don't ask), he rockets off to Earth. His body, which grew up in much lower gravity, almost immediately reacts badly to the new environment, but you can't keep a good teen down, and before long Gardner escapes his quarantine to meet up with Tulsa, whom he recruits for a special mission of his own: to find his father. Unfortunately, with the Earth's gravity constantly wreaking havoc on his body, Gardner is on borrowed time. Still, even borrowed time is enough time to fall in love.
As I write this, this film has received a critical drubbing and has been savaged at the U.S. box office. That said, there's actually a lot to like about this movie, which boasts an impressive cast and really remarkable production value.
Chelsom has an extraordinary eye for beauty, as shown by his brief Mars shots and the shots of Gardner and Tulsa driving cross-country to find his dad which show some truly gorgeous scenery. There's a shot I particularly loved: the two of them are driving en route to Arizona and in the background, the sky is filled with hot-air balloons. Had this movie been better-received, this is one of the shots with which it would have been identified.
Another thing, to my mind, really works is the chemistry between Butterfield, who turns in a truly amiable performance, and Robertson, even though she looks noticeably older than her character's seventeen years. While I could have done without their 80s-ish sex scene, and a lot of their banter kind of fell flat, I did enjoy the back-and-forth between them, and the contrast in their characters, that led them to where everyone knew they were headed. One memorable moment, for me, was one in which Gardner spies Tulsa playing (and singing) a song she composed on an electronic organ in a Costco. There simply weren't enough of these in this film.
And that, ultimately, is the problem. Although the film looks great, its script is littered with so many absurdities and gaffes in simple logic that not even the star-crossed lovers or their supporting thespians Oldman and Gugino can elevate it. The movie asks us to believe that a kid who's never been on Earth, and who is actually infirm, can not only escape quarantine, but then consistently elude the authorities, even with all of the technology at their disposal just by walking and hitching rides. It almost plays out like a running gag throughout the film. Then there's all the pseudo-science about Gardner's terrestrial condition, which makes one wonder why nobody thought this would happen in the first place. It's just a lot of bad writing, which is a shame because the premise was really interesting, and had the film been better constructed the love story, which has shades of Roman Holiday, would have played out a lot better.
I'm ambivalent about recommending this movie to anyone but the most die-hard romantics, but I think it's fair to say that this movie is quite likely to strike a chord with people who remember the young-love stories of the 1980s, which had their fair share of silly scripts.
5.5/10
Sunday, January 29, 2017
A Comedy about Concerts and Carwashes: A Review of Sing
written and directed by Garth Jennings
There's something almost cynical about how today's animated films from the leading studios are made and packaged. They're either highbrow, blatant Oscar-bait like Pixar's products (or poor facsimiles of highbrow Oscar-bait, like Finding Dory) or lowest-common-denominator idiocy designed to sell toys, like Minions or The Secret Life of Pets. While I was pleasantly surprised by the earnest, entertaining and intelligent Zootopia, which seemed to step out of comfort zones a little bit, but not quite as pleased with Moana, a film which leaned heavily on formula, even as it purported to be iconoclastic with its brown-skinned heroine.
While, arguably the most daring animated film of last year was the stop-motion spectacle Kubo and the Two Strings (with my personal favorite being Zootopia), I also found myself enjoying the ensemble musical-comedy Sing, which really doesn't have awards aspiration and which, at the same time doesn't pander purely to six-year olds. It's content to be its own thing.
Sing, which features the voices of Hollywood heavyweights Matthew McConaughey, Scarlett Johanson and Reese Witherspoon, is a story about reaching for one's dreams, even when it seems too late or too improbable. It begins with Buster Moon (McConaughey) a koala who has been in love with the stage since his childhood, but whose beloved theater is about to shut down, making one last-ditch attempt to save his theater by staging a singing competition. Due to a printing error by his geriatric personal assistant Ms. Crawley (an iguana voiced by the director Garth Jennings), the prize money offered is One Hundred Thousand Dollars instead of the One Thousand Dollars Buster actually has on hand. The contestants include exhausted homemaker Rosita (Witherspoon), a pig who has to take care of 25 piglets, the flamboyant Gunter (Nick Kroll), another pig who isn't much of a singer but is a consummate showman, teenage gorilla Johnny (Taron Egerton), son of a career criminal who doesn't want to follow in his father's footsteps, porcupine Ash (Scarlett Johansson) a rocker whose boyfriend is used to hogging the limelight, street hustler Mike (Seth McFarlane) street-hustling mouse with a talent for crooning, and Meena (Tori Kelly), a shy elephant who can belt out tunes with the best of them, provided she can get over her stage fright. Buster doesn't have the prize money but hopes to impress Nana Noodleman (Jennifer Saunders) who used to be the top-billed actress at the theater and happens to be loaded, in order to get her to sponsor the show.
High jinks ensue, and while things don't quite turn out as planned, in the end all that talent comes together for something really special.
My favorite release of Illumination Pictures remains to be the original Despicable Me, which really surprised me with its refreshing bad-guy-turned-instant-daddy story, which immediately got old by the second movie. This film, unlike any other film in Illumination's catalog since its breakout smash, actually has some of the heart that made Gru's inaugural adventure so appealing to me, and it's in large part to the vocal performances. While McConaughey has the lion's share of voice/screen time, the rest of the ensemble gets its opportunity to shine; in particular the stories of Rosita and Johnny stood out, though Meena, voiced by real-life singing sensation Kelly, got the musical spotlight late in the film.
It's a properly silly film; there are plenty of questions that can keep nitpickers in the audience busy, like why is Rosita stuck at home taking care of her two dozen plus one kids when she's actually a genius-level inventor? How are people not screaming in agony when Ash flicks her quills everywhere while on stage? How did Buster Moon and crew build a tank just by slapping together all the thin glass panes they could get their hands on? It is a lot of good fun, though, and all of the musical numbers, which are the film's true highlights, deliver the goods.
The good news for parents is that, while this film was clearly made with kids in mind, the little tidbits about chasing one's dreams after it may be too late may yet resonate with some from the slightly middle-aged set. And some of the tunes may ring a bell with more than just the Taylor-Swift-adoring crowd.
7.5/10
There's something almost cynical about how today's animated films from the leading studios are made and packaged. They're either highbrow, blatant Oscar-bait like Pixar's products (or poor facsimiles of highbrow Oscar-bait, like Finding Dory) or lowest-common-denominator idiocy designed to sell toys, like Minions or The Secret Life of Pets. While I was pleasantly surprised by the earnest, entertaining and intelligent Zootopia, which seemed to step out of comfort zones a little bit, but not quite as pleased with Moana, a film which leaned heavily on formula, even as it purported to be iconoclastic with its brown-skinned heroine.
While, arguably the most daring animated film of last year was the stop-motion spectacle Kubo and the Two Strings (with my personal favorite being Zootopia), I also found myself enjoying the ensemble musical-comedy Sing, which really doesn't have awards aspiration and which, at the same time doesn't pander purely to six-year olds. It's content to be its own thing.
Sing, which features the voices of Hollywood heavyweights Matthew McConaughey, Scarlett Johanson and Reese Witherspoon, is a story about reaching for one's dreams, even when it seems too late or too improbable. It begins with Buster Moon (McConaughey) a koala who has been in love with the stage since his childhood, but whose beloved theater is about to shut down, making one last-ditch attempt to save his theater by staging a singing competition. Due to a printing error by his geriatric personal assistant Ms. Crawley (an iguana voiced by the director Garth Jennings), the prize money offered is One Hundred Thousand Dollars instead of the One Thousand Dollars Buster actually has on hand. The contestants include exhausted homemaker Rosita (Witherspoon), a pig who has to take care of 25 piglets, the flamboyant Gunter (Nick Kroll), another pig who isn't much of a singer but is a consummate showman, teenage gorilla Johnny (Taron Egerton), son of a career criminal who doesn't want to follow in his father's footsteps, porcupine Ash (Scarlett Johansson) a rocker whose boyfriend is used to hogging the limelight, street hustler Mike (Seth McFarlane) street-hustling mouse with a talent for crooning, and Meena (Tori Kelly), a shy elephant who can belt out tunes with the best of them, provided she can get over her stage fright. Buster doesn't have the prize money but hopes to impress Nana Noodleman (Jennifer Saunders) who used to be the top-billed actress at the theater and happens to be loaded, in order to get her to sponsor the show.
High jinks ensue, and while things don't quite turn out as planned, in the end all that talent comes together for something really special.
My favorite release of Illumination Pictures remains to be the original Despicable Me, which really surprised me with its refreshing bad-guy-turned-instant-daddy story, which immediately got old by the second movie. This film, unlike any other film in Illumination's catalog since its breakout smash, actually has some of the heart that made Gru's inaugural adventure so appealing to me, and it's in large part to the vocal performances. While McConaughey has the lion's share of voice/screen time, the rest of the ensemble gets its opportunity to shine; in particular the stories of Rosita and Johnny stood out, though Meena, voiced by real-life singing sensation Kelly, got the musical spotlight late in the film.
It's a properly silly film; there are plenty of questions that can keep nitpickers in the audience busy, like why is Rosita stuck at home taking care of her two dozen plus one kids when she's actually a genius-level inventor? How are people not screaming in agony when Ash flicks her quills everywhere while on stage? How did Buster Moon and crew build a tank just by slapping together all the thin glass panes they could get their hands on? It is a lot of good fun, though, and all of the musical numbers, which are the film's true highlights, deliver the goods.
The good news for parents is that, while this film was clearly made with kids in mind, the little tidbits about chasing one's dreams after it may be too late may yet resonate with some from the slightly middle-aged set. And some of the tunes may ring a bell with more than just the Taylor-Swift-adoring crowd.
7.5/10
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