Star Trek Beyond (2016)

Directed by: Justin Lin

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Star Trek 3: Beyond the Fast and the Furious 8 is the latest Trek Film in the rebooted JJ-verse of faster-er, more explosion-y, screamy, punchier Star Trek films. In this film, bad man wants revenge. Enterprise and co. are sent to stop the bad man. The enterprise is destroyed, leaving Kirk and the rest of the crew to stop bad man before he does bad thing, because revenge. 

(Note: Don't get mad at me about spoilers, the trailers already gave away everything. There will be one spoiler I'll stick at the very end )

But seriously this time. Star Trek: Beyond follows the crew as they are left marooned on a planet. Their ship is destroyed, leaving the crew with their wits and scrounging abilities to escape captivity and stop an evil alien terrorist before he attacks a Starfleet base. 

Star Trek: Beyond was an enjoyable film on a very superficial level. I like to judge these new Trek films as just generic space action movies, because you'd never be able to sell a "real" Trek movie that wasn't an over the top, supercharged action film. So on those merits, it works. Although this entry sometimes feels like its trying to do two things: Be an action movie and be an actual Star Trek movie. There's all of the action, punching, screaming, revenge-y bad man, and explosions that we've come to expect in this new series. And then there's some actual moments and images that feel like Star Trek. Like the look of the alien planet that the crew finds themselves marooned on. It looks like a supped up version of some corny alien planet right out of the 60's TV show. Shots of all of the colored uniforms on the planet when the crew was imprisoned looked cool.  There was lots of more neat and funny character moments. More of Bones and Scotty, whom I like way more than Kirk and Spock in this new series. They do try to tack on a scene where Sulu is revealed to be gay in this universe. It feels silly and pandering, something George Takei has even given the film criticism for. 

The rest is... Well, the same as the last two films. It was kind of laughable of how the villain was just another random guy with anger problems who wanted revenge against Starfleet for some reason. Nero, the villain from the first film, was a random guy who was angry and wanted revenge. Totally not Khan who ended up being Khan was a random guy who wanted revenge, except it was dumb that he did because Kirk and co. never met him before in this rebooted universe like they originally did in the TV series. In addition to Revenge man, they have also added a Marvel style MacGuffin to prod along the plot in the first few scenes. This movie also tries to do a plot twist that is both stupid, lacks any weight or consequence, and was literally given away in the trailer. It even has a laughably bad enhance, ENHANCE, E N H A N C E scene. 

The action, while well shot and visually good looking, is tiring after even just the first third of the film. However, just having good looking action shouldn't get you props these days. Its normal for a $175 million blockbuster to have good looking effects and action. But, it gets tiring. Every punching fight has to last 10 minutes. Every character appears to be some kind of martial arts expert. Fights lack any real weight to them and feel overly choreographed. 

Bottom line- 3/5- It had more good character moments and more fun than the last entry, but its so, so stupid. 

SPOILER BELOW 

I never thought there would be anything more stupid than Jeff Goldblum using his old timey Windows laptop to destroy an alien fleet. This movie destroys an alien fleet/swarm with the Beastie Boys. They literally play the Beastie Boys really loud and all of the alien ships explode. They plug a boom box into the ship, turn on the Beastie Boys, and alien ships start exploding in sync with the music. 

"You're welcome"- Tim Burton

District 9 (2009) Review Update

Directed By: Neill Blomkamp

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I know I've reviewed this movie in the past. I've re-watched it recently and had some more feelings I'd like to mention. You can read my 5-year-old review here if you want to hear me just gush about it. My feelings have changed slightly. I still like it, I like it a lot and it remains in my top five movies.

My new thoughts have more to do with the director than the film itself. After seeing D9 for the first time I was super excited with what Blomkamp would do in the future. He's done two more films, as you're probably aware, Elysium and Chappie. Elysium was somewhat disappointing if meh/ok action movie. Chappie was kind of a mess. I went back into watching D9 with these other two films in the back of my mind. What flaws there were in D9, kind of a simple main plot, hollow villains, social commentary as subtle as a sledgehammer to the forehead, some odd character choices, all were much more apparent to me than the first few times I saw D9. When the main villain proclaims with a maniacal laugh that he "loves watching prawns die" I groaned when I'd never groaned in that spot of the movie before.  I noticed these same issues on a larger scale in his other two films. I tried hard to think of why D9 worked and Elysium/Chappie didn't. So what I did whatever any other self respecting loser movie nerd would do: I went and watched all of the behind the scenes special features.

District 9, like many films by first time directors, was made on a modest budget with a lot of guerrilla style film making involved. Lots of location shoots, lots of improv on part of the main actor and his co-stars, and lots of budget limitations that limited the overall scope. I noticed Blomkamp commenting in one of the special features that D9 was a very stressful shoot because of the lack of planning and concrete script. He later says that he would "never make a film like that again". That "everything would be planned out". And then I was disappointed.

Sometimes, the best film making comes out of adversity. Making a new, original idea on a modest budget forces you to make compromises. It forces you to listen to others ideas, consider other options and change things on the fly. Imagine if George Lucas had already been a sellout hack fraud a famous, successful director before he decided to make Star Wars. Imagine if James Cameron had conceived and filmed The Terminator in 2009 on a $240 million budget. They would have been totally different movies. They were shaped by time in which they were made and circumstance as much as they were by the writers and directors.

Blomkamp seems to be a visual director. He makes excellent use of special effects in his films. The CGI creatures and tech in D9 blow me away even today; on a budget of pennies compared to Hollywood blockbusters that manage to churn out dull, cartoonish, suspension of disbelief shattering CGI garbage every summer. His other two films share the same visual language and good effects. Dirt, realistic looking robots, interesting world building. But the story, message and characters seem to have fallen apart.

I know I'm arm chair quarterbacking to the max here, I have no experience in film aside from watching them and offering my non solicited opinions. But I hope Blomkamp can pair with a good writer/producer team that has him making good movies again. Who knows, maybe he'll be the next Ridley Scott, who manages to turn out at least one OK movie for every three they do. We (I) can only hope.

The Revenant (2015)

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The Revenant will probably be remembered as the picture that finally won Leo an Oscar for his realistic and challenging portrayal of a betrayed frontiersman. Which, in my opinion, is kinda disappointing. The Revenant contains some of the most beautiful cinematography I can recall seeing, and its a shame that film-making gets overshadowed by the A list stars that partake in it. While the cinematographer and director both got Oscars as well, no one (except movie nerds) knows or even will talk about them. In the end, a private industry awards night doesn't, and shouldn't, influence what you like about movies.

The Revenant is a bleak tale that is Based on True Events*** about Hugh Glass (Leo), an 1820s frontiersman who is tasked with helping a fur trapping party navigate Native American controlled wilderness. They are attacked and forced to flee, leading to a sequence of events where Leo is mauled by a bear in an excessive 15 minute scene. He then is betrayed by one of his fellow pelt traders (Tom Hardy) and left for dead. The film has a couple of other meandering plot points, but in the end becomes just a simple revenge tale.

*** There once was a Guy name Hugh Glass and he wrote a letter about being attacked by a bear. 

What I liked :

The visuals. Early after its release, I heard all about how the budget ballooned and production was delayed due to the director's and cinematographer's insistence to only shoot in natural light. This sounded like a gimmick to me at first. Just because a film was difficult and challenging to make does not elevate it to high art. After seeing the film, I can say that it has a unique visual style I've never seen before. It almost feels like you are watching some type of nature documentary, not a fictional Hollywood production. During the opening shots I almost felt I could reach out and stick my hand into the flowing water on the screen. Seeing actors silhouetted by a setting sun during and extended, one take action sequence is enough to make you marvel at film making again.  Seeing it in HDR and 4K is also quite the treat.

The World Building. The Revenant is just as much a revenge death and misery genre piece period piece as it is a revenge story. The world building here is excellent. It gives a great impression of a frontier that hasn't yet been conquered. There is money to be made but only if you're willing to endure every day as a struggle to survive. Costumes and locations are spot on.

Tom Hardy. Deserved the Oscar more than Leo did.

What I'm Not Sure I Liked:

Hey, Film Academy, look at my long takes. Aren't they impressive? Giv Oscar Pls. I'm a sucker for long, unbroken takes. What makes me appreciate them even more is when they're hardly noticeable. They become annoying when the director seemingly draws attention to them in order to show off at how good of a director he is, which happens a few times. There is also some digital-editing trickery where the camera does a fast "woosh" movement to blatantly hide a cut. That kind of thing makes me roll my eyes a bit. It pulls me out of the movie more than just a standard cut would have done. If you're going to do long shots, doing them subtly is more impressive (this does happen a few times and the director deserves props for that.)

ATTACK OF THE BEAR. The CGI bear was pretty impressive. Not sure Leo needed to be mauled for 10 minutes straight for us to get the point though.

What I Didn't Like: 

Leo. While he's a perfectly fine any competent actor, I just never bought his character. I get his desire for revenge. I just don't get him as a character or person. Many of the supporting cast feel more lively in comparison, while Leo is just Leo with a funny accent that sometimes is there and sometimes isn't. "But!" I hear you cry "He ate real raw fish and deer liver! And hes a vegetarian! He's so committed!" Cool. I don't care. Like I said above, just because something is physically challenging does not automatically elevate it to high art.

The Son/Wife Flashbacks. They were kind of silly and really didn't flesh out Leo's character at all. You could have saved 20-30 minutes in run time and made this a leaner, faster paced revenge story. I feel that these sequences throw off the pacing a bit and bloat the run time.

Bottom Line: 4/5 Its a competently told, beautifully shot revenge story that was over-hyped with Oscar buzz and conservative bloggers claiming that film contained a bear-rape scene.

Chappie (2015)

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Never before have I written about a movie that made me feel so conflicted. Neil Blomkamp has made only one film, District 9, that has been an overall critical success. His others, Elysium and now Chappie, have been generally critically panned. Chappie follows those two films with a very identical visual language and theme. I wanted to like Chappie desperately, but it ends up being more of a hot mess than an enjoyable film.

Chappie follows the story of a robot designer, Deon (Dev Patel), working for an international arms company. That company has hit it big selling mechanized “scouts” to augment South Africa’s fledgling police force. Crime is falling, and large sums of money in the form of government contracts are rolling in. It feels very Robocop, right up to the giant two-legged robot laden with a bunch of guns that still doesn’t quite work right. Deon wants to focus his efforts on creating the world’s first true artificial intelligence but is rebuffed by his corporate boss. Hugh Jackman plays a bad guy this time, and seems to enjoy being cartoonishly evil for a change. Sigourney Weaver also shows up to read lines and collect a paycheck. Eventually, the AI robot does get made, but things go awry when he is kidnapped by two gangsters looking for a means to pull off a big heist.

We’ll start off with the good. One thing Neil Blomkamp does well is style and atmosphere. His movies always have a certain level of industrial grit to them. Two of them take place in inner city slums of South Africa, while one takes place in a futuristic slum of Mexico that looks just like a modern day slum of South Africa. The tech looks really neat, the robots in this film have a great design, even if they feel a bit recycled from Elysium. (I imagine that there’s some credence to the idea that all of Blomkamp’s movies take place in their own shared universe). The effects for the robots are also fantastic. Its nearly impossible to tell if they are CGI or some type of practical effect at any given time. Some of the action scenes are fun.

Unfortunately, that’s about it. My biggest issue with the film was the South African rap duo Die Antwoord, which play two gangsters that kidnap Chappie the robot. They have a huge role in the film, and are mostly just really super obnoxious. Every scene they are in is cringe worthy. I can imagine some others being forced to turn this movie off. Not to mention they were apparently a huge nightmare to the cast and crew, resulting in rewrites after certain actors refused to film scenes with them.

The plot, while trying to pretend it’s trying to do something interesting, really isn’t. It’s like a backwards Robocop: A police robot gains sentience, and must discover his humanity through conducting crimes. Or, if you will, a more violent South African remake of Short Circuit. I also wasn’t sure why an AI had to behave like an infant or child. I can understand having to learn to understand human motivation, but to have the robot start out like a literal babbling baby was an odd choice. There were a couple odd plot devices as well- Chappie is able to interface with a computer using a neural helmet designed for a human. If he doesn’t have any brains, how does it work? Why doesn’t he just plug himself into the computer? Are we supposed to believe it’s a “soul” detecting helmet? There’s some other head scratching scenes as well, including the silly computer code typed on a keyboard that makes the AI program run.

Bottom Line- 2 out of 5- Mostly style over substance, and mostly just loud noise instead of any type of intelligence. It’s a fun type of dystopia until you really meet your main characters. If you liked Blomkamp’s other films it’s at least worth a rent, but it’s the least strong out of the bunch.

Big Hero 6 (2014)

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Like most movies these days, it takes me too long to get round to seeing them. Or it takes me too long to getting around to writing about them. In this case, it was the former. Its a fun, beautifully animated, and surprisingly emotional picture that deserves the praise it got. Big Hero 6 is a Disney adaption of a Marvel comic book. Which blows my mind, considering it there have been no solid sequel plans announced. Usually anything Disney multiplied by Marvel results in a spreadsheet of sequels and spin offs planned for out in detail for the next 15 years. 

Big Hero 6 takes place in the fictional city of San Fransokyo; a futuristic blend of two already visualy interesting cites. Young prodigy Hiro (Ryan Potter) is pulled away from a career of back alley "bot fighting" by his older brother Tadashi (Daniel Henney). After tragedy strikes, Hiro sets out on an adventure aided by the robot Baymax. 

I shouldn't have doubted the ability of a Disney animated picture to make be feel feelings, but it did. The trailers portrayed it to be fairly light hearted but it makes a pretty serious emotional turn right off the bat. (Note: I cried at the end of Toy Story 3). It manages to be the best of both Disney and Marvel; combining a fun adventure with plenty of heart and fun action. The animation and art direction are also fantastic. Baymax really steals the show, pulling plenty of heartstrings and providing plenty of the film's laughs. 

The plot isn't overly complex, and a lot of the beats in the third act can be predicted before they happen. However, the heart of the characters and the overall beauty of the visuals make up for this. 

Bottom Line- 4 out of 5- The best parts of a Disney animated pictured blended with the best action hero action Marvel has to provide. 

Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation (2015)

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Mission Impossible: Rouge Nation is the 5th outing of crazed, rich cultist Tom Cruise as secret agent Ethan Hawke. This time, Hawke is up against another secret evil organization, only this time its secreterer and evilerer than before. Can Cruise (and friends) complete the mission? 

Well, yes, because that's how things work in these kinds of movies. What follows is a series of loosely connected set pieces that are enjoyable, but not nearly up to the level of sheer fun as the last entry in the series.

The plot is... well, typical for this type of movie. Bad thing happens. Secret agents get blamed. Secret agents must battle both good guys and bad guys to clear their name and stop more bad thing from happening. Set piece in exotic locale. Set piece in another exotic locale. Product placement! Another exotic locale. Motorcycle chase. Expensive underwater set piece. Climax. More product placement. Resolution.

In fact, the main thing that I noticed about this movie was all of the shameless product placement. Some of the things I noticed (Full list taken from brandchannel)

Airbus (A400)- The plane Tom Cruise dangles from on the poster.
BMW- Make sure the logo is in focus at all times
Dell- Lots of Dell Monotors and laptops with logos perfectly visible and centered in frame.
Microsoft Windows- Close up on screens, gratuitous. Shots that linger on surface tablets with large Microsoft logos for long amounts of time.
Nokia- Windows phones!
And plenty of others that I can't really remember. The biggest one do I remember, that I'm not sure many others would have noticed, is the Zoll X Series Cardiac Monitor/Defibrillator. Its used to revive Tom Cruise in one scene, and to knock out another character in the same scene. These big studio franchises are a big business, and I understand that. However, there is a point where the product placement becomes groan worthy and stands out a bit too much.

Revive your own action hero, starting at $15,358 MSRP. 

The mission impossible films, at least the last two, really survive on their unique tone. Its somewhere in between the Jason Borne modern, dark spy thriller; and the old-school, wacky 1970s era James Bond adventures. It keeps itself serious enough to keep us invested in the plot and its consequences, while at the same time being just tongue-in-cheek enough to keep the action fun and entertaining. While this outing was less fun than the Brad Bird directed Ghost Protocol, its still a serviceable outing. The main set piece, this time inside of a giant, water cooled computer core, certainly is thrilling. But its still no comparison to the Burj Khalifa sequence in the last film. While I'm sure it involved Tom Cruse risking his life in some kind of giant underwater pool it still ended up looking like a video game with all of the CGI spliced in. In contrast to the Burj Khalifa sequence, where the only thing that CGI was used for was to erase the wires holding the studio's $50 million plaything Tom Cruise in the air. 

Bottom Line- 3 out of 5: An enjoyable action film, especially if you like millionaire cultists Tom Cruise. Worth a rent, but not as fun as the last outing. 

Sicario (2015)

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Sicario is Spanish for “hitman” or “assassin”. I learned this from watching the trailer. For the majority of the film, I was waiting to find out what its significance was. It paid off in a very slow, tense, and anxiety ridden way that subverted the usual type of plot twist that tries way too hard to “blow your mind”.

Sicario starts out by using tropes we’re very familiar with in crime dramas or police procedurals. Some examples:

-Rookie FBI agent recruited for extra special secret dangerous mission.

-Sassy partner/sidekick.

-Super clean, futuristic government offices with glass walls, glass tables and lots of flat screen monitors.

-Viewing security cameras in the back of an unmarked van.

-Black government SUVs with tinted windows.

-Mysterious, unconventional mentor.

-Don’t touch that, it’s going to- Yep, it blew up.

 It uses those tropes very well, though, and drops most of them by midway through the film. Emily Blunt stars as Kate, an up and coming FBI agent working the drug trade routes along the southern border. She is recruited by the unconventional (He wears flip flops in the office! So unconventional!) government agent Matt, played very well by Josh Brolin. The real star is Benicio Del Toro, who is a shady government “consultant” working on the team. I won’t go much more into plot details, because its best if you go in fresh, but the overall plot is relatively simple.

Where Sicario really shines is pacing and the building of tension. The score is extremely minimal, and gives a sense of dread the minute it starts. The type of tension is also something that’s rare now-a-days; it’s not “edge of your seat” in the “wow this is an exciting, fun adventure” sense, its edge of your seat in the “wow I’m scared, I feel sick to my stomach and am actually sweating right now” sense. Director Denis Villeneuve has demonstrated with great skill how he can impart a sense of pure dread on an audience.

My one and only gripe with the film is that the main character felt relatively flat up until the third act. She just goes along for the ride, literally, for the first 40 minutes of the film. This is explained away in the end but sort of feels unrealistic to add an FBI agent to your team just to have them do nothing. Blunt plays the character very well, and an arc is apparent by the end of the film. Josh Brolin does a good job in his role, but is overshadowed by Benicio Del Toro. Del Toro’s performance starts out benign and kind of mysterious, but slowly morphs into something you’d check under your bed for before going to sleep at night.

Bottom Line- 4 out of 5: Like I said, the plot and overall lesson of this film has been done many times before. How far will you go to stop the bad guys, will you risk resorting to immoral means to win, etc. Where Sicario really shines is in pacing, tone and casting. Overall a very good crime thriller that subverts some genre tropes to make for a memorable experience.