Month: June 2017

Released: June 2017

Director: Michael Bay

Rated PG-13

Run Time: 149 Minutes

Distributor: Paramount Pictures

Genre: Science Fiction/Action

Cast:
Mark Wahlburg: Cade Yeager
Anthony Hopkins: Sir Edmund Burton
Josh Duhamel: Colonel William Lennox
Laura Haddock: Vivian Wembley
Peter Cullen: Optimus Prime(Voice)
Frank Welker: Megatron(Voice)
Erik Aadahl: Bumblebee)Voice

It seems as though 2017 will be known as the year of the number 5.  Why?  Because of the amount of movies that are in their 5th iteration.  In January we had our 5th Underworld film: Blood Wars, then last month we had Pirates of the Caribbean 5, and now we have a 5th Transformers movie.  Why?  Because of this: $.  Don’t get me wrong, I get why sequels are made; it’s a business.  If you have movie that performs extraordinarily well, why wouldn’t you try to duplicate that success?  I absolutely would.  I’m going to discuss this particular point in another post, but one of the reasons why certain franchises shouldn’t be extended past a certain point is that they stop being fresh.  They stop being original and keep rehashing older ideas.  Certain franchises like Star Wars have a lot to draw from, so I don’t see that ending any time soon.  It’s becoming increasingly clear that Transformers and Pirates of the Caribbean are swiftly running out of ideas.  I guess it comes down to the writers who end up not having a lot to offer.  So, what does Transformers 5 have to offer?

In the Dark Ages, King Arthur and his Knights are losing a battle against the invading Saxons.  Struggling to hold on while Merlin searches for an ancient weapon that will help them win the war.  It turns out that this ancient weapon is a group of Transformer “knights” who lend Merlin their staff so that Arthur can win the war.  1600 Years later, Transformers are on the run from the planet’s governments, except Cuba, and more keep arriving day by day.  It appears that this staff is the key to reviving the Transformers’ home planet of Cybertron.  Seeking to destroy his creator, Optimus Prime lands on Cybertron and is captured and brainwashed by Quintessa, the creator of the Transformers.  If you think that doesn’t make any sense, whatsoever, you’re not alone.  This movie’s story is so convoluted, I can’t make heads or tails of it.  It’s not the good kind of convoluted, either.  They’re re-writing Earth’s history in a far more blatant fashion than in the previous films.  There is far too much going on than what is needed for a Transformers movie.  It never needed to be complicated.  It’s Autobots vs. Decepticons.  What more do you need?  Apparently, the writers decided it would be cool to draw on the legend of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, as well as bringing Unicron into the mix.  Unicron, I get.  Absolutely.  I’ve been wanting for this to happen for years.  But we won’t see Unicron in full until the next movie, if there’s a next movie.  But bringing King Arthur into the mix?  There was no need for that.  It didn’t really add anything new.  It’s just best not to go into a movie like this expecting a decent story.

Since this is a Michael Bay movie, you really can’t expect Oscar-worthy performances.  You won’t get them.  It would have been one thing if these characters were people that you cared about, but the way they are written, kinda makes them…..there.  Honestly, I had no emotional connection to any of the characters on the screen.  Most of them were irritating.  Mark Wahlburg and Josh Duhamel were the only actors that actually managed to be somewhat convincing.  Anthony Hopkins was a hoot to watch however.  Everyone else was forgettable.  As for the robots?  That’s a much better situation.  Frank Welker returns to voice Megatron, and that is totally awesome.  Peter Cullen is and always has been Optimus Prime.  Nobody else has that kind of a commanding voice.  If there was an issue with the voice acting, it’s with the casting of Omar Sy as Hot Rod.  Giving Hot Rod a French accent was a bad idea.  I’m not knocking Omar Sy for that, he did pretty well, but Hot Rod is NOT French.

If there’s one thing that Michael Bay is truly known for, is action.  This guy knows how to blow shit up.  He’s had over twenty years to perfect the art of destruction and it is truly on display here.  Transformers is a fairly action-packed movie, but thankfully, it’s action that you can see.  Bay has thankfully moved away from the whole hyper-active editing that he’s usually known for.  For these enormous set-pieces, you can’t really do that kind of editing.  The opening battle sequence between the Britons and the Saxons is truly epic.  It’s explosive and you have two massive armies colliding.  Awesome.  I mean that, it was pretty cool.  In fact, most of the action in the film is pretty damn good.  There’s a lot of it, so you’re never bored.  If you can ignore the nonsensical story-line and just come for the action, there’s plenty to love here.  The CGI and effects are simply astounding.  The last act of the movie is absolutely bonkers.  I will say this for Michael Bay:  When he wants to go big, he goes BIG!  He’s always been about large-scale action, and he delivers in spades with this one.

Unfortunately, all the action in the world can’t really hold up a movie that’s bogged down by an needlessly complex story with substandard characters and fairly lousy writing.  Yeah, the action’s fantastic and the movie’s not boring, but there’s nothing here that we haven’t seen before.  After seeing movies like Logan and Wonder Woman that have fantastic stories, characters AND action, it’s a bit of a let-down to see a big movie that’s overly reliant on action.  Now, to be fair, Michael Bay is no idiot; he knows that his movies make money, and he’s got fans.  Truth be told, I’m one of them.  I love how he directs big action sequences.  But until he can learn to hire writers that can deliver compelling story-lines and characters, all that he’s going to deliver is an action movie that’s big, loud and messy.  Most of the time, that’s not necessarily a bad thing, but today’s audiences are a wee bit more complex than that.  What worked ten years ago, doesn’t necessarily work today.  I enjoyed it, personally, but the all the negatives bog down what could have been a truly stellar movie.

Final Recommendation:  Sticky-shoe theater.  7/10.

Released: June 1975

Director: Steven Spielberg

Rated PG

Run Time: 124 Minutes

Distributor: Universal Pictures

Genre: Horror/Thriller

Cast:
Roy Scheider: Chieft Martin Brody
Robert Shaw: Quint
Richard Dreyfuss: Matt Hooper
Lorraine Gary: Ellen Brody
Murray Hamilton: Mayor Larry Vaughan

There have been many landmark movies released since the invention of the motion picture; far too many for me to list here.  However, the 1970s was one of the biggest decades ever for the medium.  It had some of the most spectacular ever made.  It also saw the advancement of cinematic technology:  Stuff that people had never seen before in movies.  Some of the biggest movies ever made were released during this period.  Movies like Alien, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Tora! Tora! Tora!, Patton, Apocalypse Now!, The Godfather, Rocky, and the biggest event of them all, Star Wars.  These movies ushered in a new golden age of film-making.  They inspired film-makers and film-goers alike across the globe to pursue careers in the industry, or to write about the industry or just go see movies.  Considering that the Vietnam War was a very sore spot for most people during that time, movies were a way for a lot of people to temporarily forget the war for two hours.  While the movies that I just listed are fantastic, one of the movies that came out in 1975 was one of the most influential and terrifying movies ever released:  Jaws.

This is not going to be one of my typical reviews where I discuss the story first and start from there.  This is going to be more of a celebratory look at one of cinema’s greatest achievements in film and the film that basically launched Steven Spielberg’s career as a director.  There’s a number of reasons why this movie works so well.  For one: The story is minimal.  It’s basically about a shark terrorizing people.  That’s about as simple as a plot as you can get, but it works.  It works because it’s not necessarily about the animal itself, but rather the people who are forced to deal with the shark, which is a Great White.  The best films are often character-driven.  It worked for Star Wars, Alien, and Rocky.  That’s the best way to get people invested in a film, to make them care about the characters.  If you care about the characters, you want them to survive, even if they actually don’t.  The characters in Jaws are some of the most memorable characters in cinema history.  Why?  They’re well-written, well-rounded and handled realistically.  However, it’s the actors that really give them life.  Roy Scheider plays Chief Brody, a former New York cop who has basically retired to the island of Amity.  He’s the every-man, he has a fear of the ocean, which makes his situation very…unusual.  Richard Dreyfuss plays the affable Matt Hooper, who has been brought in to investigate a possible shark attack.  I love the way Mr. Dreyfuss portrays hooper.  The character is very earnest, slightly arrogant, but a decent person.  Dreyfuss portrays that very well, while also giving the character a very nihilistic sense of humor.  The real standout of the film, and most people will agree, is Robert Shaw as Quint.  If there was a character and performance that helped define a movie, it’s Quint.  This guy is a very colorful shark hunter that’s not afraid to put people in their place.  The relationship between the three characters seems antagonistic at first, but over the course of the movie, they learn to work together to bring the shark down.  Even the side characters like Ellen Brody and Mayor Vaughan are very memorable for different reasons.

The acting is fantastic, but let’s talk about how the film starts.  The opening to Jaws is one of the most iconic and terrifying scenes that you will see in any movie.  Seeing poor Chrissy get thrashed around by a shark that you don’t see, by the way, is one of the most blood-curdling scenes ever made.  That scene alone made people think twice about going into the water.  That also brings me to one of the most effective things about Jaws.  You don’t see the shark until towards the end of the movie.  That wasn’t necessarily the intention, but the shark that they had built for the movie was malfunctioning, so Steven Spielberg had to find a way to film around that issue.  However, because the shark malfunctioned, Spielberg managed to create an experience unlike any other.  You know the saying, “less is more?”  I think the film would have been far less effective had the shark prop been working as intended.  Jaws proved that you didn’t need to actually see the shark to scare the hell out of you.  People’s imaginations did that for the film-makers.  That’s the mark of a great film and great film-maker.  Also, for a movie that was rated PG, it pulled no punches.  Nobody was safe, and the scene were the young boy was killed by the shark was horrific.  The body count wasn’t particularly high, but it didn’t need to be.

If there was ever a movie where music was important, it would be Jaws.  John Williams’ theme for the film is easily one of the most iconic movie themes in cinema and music.  Even if you had never seen Jaws before, you know that theme like the back of your hand.  The way the music was used was extremely unique.  Because the shark wasn’t working the way it was supposed to, they used a combination of music and camera-work to get the audience on the edge of their seats.  It was used to make it seem as if the shark was coming after you.  The theme has been used and parodied in so many movies, yet it doesn’t dampen the effect that it has on audiences.  Kids across the world would imitate the them while they were playing in the pool, chasing their siblings and friends around.  It’s so memorable and yet it’s so simple.

Jaws is one of those rare movies that I can’t really find a problem with.  I guess if I had to find one negative about the film is the fact that the film got sequels.  Three in particular, and none of them were particularly great.  Jaws was lightening captured in a bottle.  It has certainly inspired film-makers to try and attempt their own unique spin on the kind of movie that Jaws was.  Every great movie has its knock-offs and Jaws is no different.  Aside from the sequels, we got Piranha, Up From the Depths, and Alligator.  People have been making shark movies for nearly 40 years, trying to duplicate the success of Jaws.  Sadly, very few came close.  The best shark movie since Jaws was The Shallows from 2016.  But that film took a very different spin on the genre, and it worked well enough.  That being said, Jaws is still the king of shark movies and it always will be.  42 years after the film’s release, it still has power.  I have a co-worker who refuses to see the movie, because she’s scared of sharks and Jaws is responsible for that.  It’s remarkable how effective the film still is after all this time.  The characters, the acting, the direction, music and everything else in between has helped Jaws become one of the greatest movies ever made.  I daresay, that despite production issues, Steven Spielberg has crafted a perfect movie.  Spielberg has since gone on to make some of the greatest movies ever like Close Encounters of the Third Kind, E.T., Indiana Jones, and Saving Private Ryan, and it all hinged on the fact that the shark wasn’t working.  It’s funny how small quirks like that can make a world of difference.

Jaws paved the way for film-makers like George Lucas, Eli Roth, Steven Soderburgh, and many others to make their own mark on the film industry.  I’m not entirely sure that we would have had the movies that we have without it.  42 years later, Jaws is still scaring people out of the water.  It’s great, but it’s also bringing attention to the natural world, and making people more curious about sharks.  The film has done so much for movies and everything, that I can’t give it a score.  It’s that damned good.  If you haven’t seen the film, do yourself a favor and go see it right now.  If you have seen it, go see it again.

Final Recommendation:  What’re you waiting for? Go see the movie!

Released: June 2017

Director: Alex Kurtzman

Run Time: 110 Minutes

Rated PG-13

Distributor: Universal Pictures

Genre: Action/Adventure

Cast:
Tom Cruise: Nick Morton
Russell Crowe: Dr. Henry Jekyll
Annabelle Wallis: Jenny Halsey
Sofia Boutella: Ahmanet
Jake Johnson: Chris Vail

When it comes to monster movies, Universal Studios was really the first.  Between the 1930’s and 1950’s, we had such gems like Dracula, The Wolfman, The Invisible Man, Frankenstein, The Bride of Frankenstein to name but a few.  Nobody had seen anything like them before and honestly, very few movie-makers have been able to match them since.  We’ve had variations on those monsters and some of them have been successful.  The Mummy, starring Boris Karloff was one of the original movie monster alongside the others.  The Mummy has had multiple updates as far as films go, the most famous of which is the Brendan Fraser movies of 1999 and 2001.  Those were very successful, but they also knew that they were really silly.  Now, in 2017, we have a new Mummy film starring Tom Cruise.  How does this stack up against the previous films?  In short, not very well.

The Mummy sees Tom Cruise as an army soldier, Nick Morton who is on the search for buried treasure when he’s actually supposed to be surveying enemy troops several miles somewhere else.  With his reluctant partner, Chris Vail, they head into a town that’s been overrun by militants.  Dodging bullets left and right, Vail calls in an air-strike that scatters the enemy troops.  The strike also reveals an ancient Egyptian burial site.  Thing is, this site is in Iraq, not Egypt, but features very Egyptian markings and writing.  Arriving by chopper, scientist Jenny Halsey takes charge.  Taking Nick and Vail with her, they discover that the burial site is a prison and not a tomb.  Discovering a large, deep pool of mercury, Nick shoots a line holding a counter-weight, bringing up a mysterious sarcophagus.  This coffin holds the remains of Ahmanet, an ancient princess who made a pact with the evil god Set to destroy her enemies.  You know the rest, coffin gets opened, mummy is revived, shenanigans ensue, etc, etc.  Aside from the story being absolutely derivative of the movies that have come before, the worst offense here is that the film-makers had the audacity to announce a new cinematic universe with The Mummy being the first chapter.  If you plan on crafting a new cinematic universe, you don’t announce it before the first chapter is released, and you certainly don’t open up the universe with a movie that is as sub-par as this.  You have to make sure a movie works before you even BEGIN to craft a new universe.  If the movie doesn’t work, odds are that the new universe won’t work.

I could forgive a story not being that great if the tone of the film was consistent.  It’s not.  It’s completely scatterbrained.  It’s a movie that doesn’t know if it wants to be a monster movie, action movie, or a spoof.  There’s a lot of stuff in here that just doesn’t seem to mesh very well.  Not only that, but there’s a whole ton of blatant fan-service and “nudge-nudge-wink-wink” moments in which either the older movies are clearly referenced or pointing to something on the horizon.  For example, we have a claw from The Creature from the Black Lagoon and the Book of Amun-Ra from Brendan Fraser’s films.  It’s not even trying to be its own movie.  For a movie that the makers have claimed to be the first chapter in their new “Dark Universe” franchise, it does nothing to distinguish itself from any other movie.  All the action sequences and themes that are on display here have been done before and done much better.

There are a few interesting tid-bits here and there.  Tom Cruise is…well….Tom Cruise.  He puts 150 percent into every role that he does and that’s no different here.  He’s a great actor and he does a fine job here.  Russell Crowe is another highlight.  He plays Dr. Jekyll.  Yes….THAT Dr. Jekyll.  Crowe’s character is the head of a mysterious organization that was built to protect mankind from evil forces.  Gee, I haven’t heard THAT one before.  Sofia Boutella plays the villain of the film, Ahmanet.  She’s fantastic.  The character is far more interesting than anyone else in the movie.  For one, it’s a FEMALE mummy and we understand her motivations for what she’s doing.  She’s not entirely unsympathetic.  I loved that.  Annabelle Wallis’ character of Jenny?  Good grief.  Is there a character that could be even MORE useless than Jenny?  All she does is whine and do stupid things and is only there to be saved.  She’s the fucking damsel-in-distress.  That pisses me off.  After Wonder Woman, a movie that had very strong female characters as well as a strong female lead, Jenny is a huge step backwards.  There were times that I wanted that character to die.  Fuck you, Alex Kurtzman, Jon Spaights and everyone else who had a hand in writing this movie.  That is bullshit.

I said in my opening paragraph that The Mummy is supposed to be the first chapter in Universal’s “Dark Universe.”  With cinematic universes being all the rage now, maybe Universal should have taken a cue from Marvel in how to properly set up the world in which these new movies are supposed to take place.  Iron Man kickstarted the entire Marvel Cinematic Universe, but it worked enough on its own as a movie, so in case that movie wasn’t successful, it wouldn’t have done a lot of damage.  The Mummy is probably the worst way to start off the Dark Universe.  With all the movies that have been announced for this whole thing, I really do hope that Universal steps up their game for their next movie which I hear is Bride of Frankenstein.  If they don’t get that movie to work, the Dark Universe is going to die a very quick death.  The Mummy has its moments, make no mistake about it.  If you can ignore the blatantly obvious screenplay problems and irritating characters, you MIGHT get some enjoyment out of it.

Final Recommendation:  Take this one out to the deserts of Iraq and bury it in a pool of mercury.  5/10.

Released: June 2017

Director: Patrick Syversen

Rated PG-13

Run Time: 98 Minutes

Distributor: Universal Home Video

Genre: Fantasy/Adventure

Cast:
Patrick Stewart: Drago
Tom Rhys Harries: Edric
Jessamine-Bliss Bell: Meghan
Tamzin Merchant: Queen Rhonu
Andre Eriksen: Thorgrim

Can you believe that it’s been over 20 years since the original Dragonheart hit theaters?  I can scarcely believe it myself.  The film, starring Dennis Quaid, David Thewlis, Pete Postlethwaite, and Sean Connery as Draco, hit theaters in 1996 to fairly mixed reviews.  The film definitely has its fans, and I can count myself among them.  Why?  Because dragons are fucking awesome, that’s why.  Dragonheart hit the right amount of excitement, epic battle sequences, fantastic visual effects, acting and a musical score that I can honestly say is one of the finest soundtracks ever created.  But the film also allowed the audiences to connect with Draco on an emotional level.  The writing was sharp and witty and Sean Connery’s performance outshone all others.  So, imagine my surprise when I discovered that there was a sequel: Dragonheart: A New Beginning.  The less said about that direct-to-video sequel, the better.  That really should have been the end of it, and it was until 2014.  Dragonheart 3: The Sorcerer’s Curse was released on home video.  Surprisingly, it wasn’t a terrible movie.  For a direct-to-video sequel, it had a surprising amount of production values attached to it.  The visual effects were actually quite decent.  It’s not what I would call a great film, but it was passable, plus, it had Ben Kingsley as the voice of the dragon.  How could you go wrong?  Three years later, we get ANOTHER film: Battle for the Heartfire.  Oh…..dear.

The film starts with the birth of twins Edric and Meghan.  Due to their grandfather’s bond with Drago, the twins are born with scales.  Edric has scales on his back, and Meghan on her face.  It turns out that these two share a bond with Drago and exhibit special powers of their own.  Edric has super-strength and Meghan can manipulate fire.  After the death of their father, the twins are split up.  Years later, King Gareth is on his death bed when Drago appears.  Gareth passes away and when Drago doesn’t, he begins to feel a connection to at least one of the twins.  Discovering Edric, the king’s guards tell him that he’s the rightful heir.  At the same time, Meghan returns with an army of Vikings to claim HER right as queen.  Truthfully, the story here isn’t awful.  The idea of twin siblings having these amazing powers is actually interesting, but the execution was just plain sloppy.  It feels more convoluted than it needs to be.  Part of what made the original film work was its simplicity in its story-telling.  Here, they’re trying too hard and failing.  Dragonheart is at its best when it is simple.

The acting?  Oh, lord.  It ranges exactly between “not trying at all” and “barely trying.”  I don’t know what the director was doing to try to coax a passable performance out of his actors, but he failed miserably.  The acting here is something that I would have expected from a kindergarten class play.  No, strike that, kindergarten students are better.  Tom Rhys Harries doesn’t even look like he wants to be there.  He’s like, “it’s a paycheck.”  Jessemine-Bliss Bell does a better job, but she’s still not convincing.  The villain of the movie?  A wannabe-viking who is also a wannabe-king.  Andre Eriksen’s performance is simply non-existent.  He’s just there to snarl and sneer.  The vikings in this movie are an absolute joke.  They’re not even threatening.  I’m sorry, my 3.5-year old nephew wearing a toy viking hat is more menacing.  The direction by Patrick Syversen is truly abominable.  No one here is remotely interesting.  The only interesting character is Drago, who is a CGI creation.  Thankfully, he’s voiced by the legendary Patrick Stewart, but even he’s hamstrung by a completely shit screenplay.

If the acting is bad and the story is forgettable, how does the action fare?  I’m sorry: Action?  What action?  I know that the movie’s crew was working on a very small budget, but they could have at least made more of an effort into crafting the fight scenes.  There’s nothing here that’s even worth mentioning.  At least Dragonheart 3 had something resembling a sword-fight.  Here, it’s just throwing punches at people or hurling fire at somebody.  Not even Drago gets in on the action and HE’S a fucking dragon.  Dragonheart 2 had better action and explosions, too.  Dragonheart 4 is a joke.  It has to be.

Well, some of the visual effects are SOMEWHAT competent.  The dragon looks okay, but he’s not as impressive as the previous film.  Some of the locations are pretty interesting as they did film in front of an actual castle, so they’ve got that going for them.  Honestly, I thought that Dragonheart 2 had a very cheap feeling about the whole thing, but this film takes cheap to a whole new level.  The sets, the costumes and the character designs are all, quite frankly, shite, as my Irish friends would put it.  Dragonheart: Battle for the Heartfire is an absolute mess on nearly every level.  I don’t have a clue as to why Universal thinks that we needed more Dragonheart movies.  One was good enough, but FOUR?  This is a poor attempt at a cash-grab from a franchise that really didn’t need to be one.  In my honest opinion, Dragonheart: Battle for the Heartfire is a goddamn catastrophe.  I wasn’t expecting a whole lot from a direct-to-video sequel, but I’ve seen DTV sequels that are better than this.  Dragonheart 3 was one of them.  Don’t bother with this one, whatsoever.

Final Recommendation:  Burn this with dragon-fire. 3/10.