Month: December 2014

Released: 1981(Australia), May 1982(USA)

Director: George Miller

Run Time: 94 minutes

Rated: R

Cast:
Mel Gibson: Max
Bruce Spence: The Gyro Captain
Vernon Wells: Wez

In 1979, Australian director George Miller released Mad Max, a post-apocalyptic action film.  In Australia, Mad Max was a smash hit.  It was unlike anything that anybody had ever seen before.  With a chaotic world where the roads are ruled by motorcycle gangs, Mad Max gave us a look into a future where resources like oil and gas are scarce and governments are basically non-existent.  It was unusual because it didn’t really look what many people expect a post-apocalyptic world to look like.  The film featured some of the most incredible action sequences and stunts the world had ever seen.  The problem:  It didn’t really receive much attention outside of Australia.  The movie did give us one thing though: Mel Gibson.  This was the movie that kick-started Gibson’s film career.  With the success of Mad Max in Australia, George Miller went ahead with the sequel: Mad Max 2.  Released in the United States under the name The Road Warrior, the sequel eventually became a major success, and Mel Gibson became a household name.  We can thank Gibson for some of the greatest movies ever made: The Lethal Weapon movies, Air America, and Braveheart, a film which Gibson also directed.

Wandering the wastelands, we find “Mad” Max on the run from a band of marauders out for his fuel.  After escaping them, he runs into an eccentric gyro pilot(Bruce Spence).  Being informed that there is a lone refinery still operating in the area, Max heads to the refinery only to find it under assault by a massive army of marauders, similar to the ones he encountered earlier.  Making a deal with a dying man, Max finds his way into the refinery, where he makes a deal with the leader of the people living there.  The deal: Finding a vehicle to haul a tanker full of fuel in exchange for some of that gas for his car.  The story is pretty straightforward with very few surprises.  It’s not a particularly complicated plot.  The first movie wasn’t complicated either, but The Road Warrior doesn’t take very long to get things going.  From the opening montage which features some footage from Mad Max, we learn that Max lost his family to the motorcycle gangs and became a vengeful loner as a result.  As a sequel, you really didn’t need to know what happened in the first movie to enjoy this one.

Here’s a little history about this film:  The original name of the movie in Australia was Mad Max 2.  When it was brought over to the states, however, it didn’t get the attention it deserved.  Why?  The original film didn’t get a proper release.  Nobody knew anything about Mad Max, and here we were with a sequel to a movie that we never got.  That was its initial release.  So, George Miller and the movie studios opted to change the name to The Road Warrior.  That had a much larger impact, and as a result, people started to pay more attention to the original.  Mad Max was released to mixed reviews and wasn’t terribly popular.  When The Road Warrior was released under the new name, it was a moderate success.

Now, it is very rare for a sequel to outdo the original film in every possible way, and The Road Warrior did it.  While the plot is fairly simple, what really makes this movie amazing is its action sequences.  It’s brutal, but it is also incredible thrilling at the same time.  While the characters aren’t overly interesting with the exception of Mel Gibson’s and Bruce Spence’s characters, its the action where the movie definitely delivers.  It’s basically nonstop.  The car chases are without a doubt some of the best sequences I’ve ever seen in a movie.  Most of the car sequences in action films today pale in comparison.  Why?  George Miller didn’t have access to complex visual effects the way today’s filmmakers do.  He had to rely on actual stunts.  He didn’t even use miniatures.  What you saw in The Road Warrior is exactly what you got.  The crashes and the explosions are all done for real.  The final car chase in the film is the pinnacle of car chases.  Nothing comes close.

Mad Max was a great movie, but it suffered from having too many slow points.  But the action, and the stunts were spectacular.  The Road Warrior takes the best elements of its predecessor and amplifies it by a hundred.  Because of the shift in focus to the action, we have one of the greatest movie sequels ever.  The Road Warrior is by far, the best Mad Max movie in the trilogy.  The less said about Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome, the better.  It wasn’t terrible, but it suffered from being nearly identical to the second film, only not as brutal as the PG-13 rating for that film proves.  If there’s a real down-side to The Road Warrior, its that the majority of the characters really aren’t that interesting.  We have the good guys that are guarding the refinery: They’re pretty generic.  The villains are…well, dressed like bad guys.  The one villain is Vernon Well’s Wez, who’s a complete lunatic.  He’s fun to watch.  The rest of them?  Cannon fodder, or in this case, car fodder.  Mel Gibson is simply fantastic as Max.  He’s not totally a hero, he’s mostly out for himself, but when the chips are down, he’s ready for the long haul.  Bruce Spence is an interesting actor.  He plays some fairly unique characters and his gyro pilot is particularly strange.  While he seems to be out for himself, we do see that when he witnesses the brutality of the marauders, he does have a bit a conscience.  He does seem a bit goofy at times, but I like him all the same.  My final verdict for The Road Warrior is a 10/10.  Very few sequels are better than the original.

I chose to review The Road Warrior because a new Mad Max film is on the way.  Mad Max: Fury Road is directed by George Miller and will be released to theaters in the summer of 2015.  Featuring Tom Hardy in the legendary role of Max Rockatansky, Mad Max: Fury Road is neither a sequel nor remake.  It’s a reboot and if this new trailer is any indication,  Fury Road is going to be a hell of a ride.  Here is the official trailer for Mad Max: Fury Road:

Are we excited yet?

Released: September 2014

Director: Alan White

Run Time: 96 Minutes

Rated R

Cast:
John Cusack: Benjamin
Ryan Phillipe: Steven
Rachelle Lefevre: Shannon
Jacki Weaver: Reigert

Human trafficking is serious business.  A multi-billion dollar industry, human trafficking sees people of all types being smuggled into various countries for various reasons: Sex, labor, or organs.  In any case, it’s a serious problem plaguing our world.  It’s hideous and the victims are silent, being threatened with their lives or the lives of their families.  In 2010, the country of Haiti was hammered by one of the most devastating earthquakes the country had ever seen, leaving well over 100,000 people dead.  In the aftermath of the earthquake, the homeless and the children became easy targets for violent criminals and human traffickers.  Some of these children are exploited to scam rich people out of money in adoption fraud cases.  In any event, there have been numerous films centered around human trafficking.  Taken, Abduction of Eden, and Spartan are just some of the many movies dealing with the practice.  Here, we have another movie about human trafficking that looks like a potentially decent thriller.  Alas, it’s pretty much a by-the-numbers affair.  The film is Reclaim.

Opening at a nearby orphanage, Steven and his wife, Shannon have just signed papers to adopt a 7-year old Haitian girl.  The head of the orphanage tells the couple it will take a few days to process everything and get the child a proper passport.  Spending a couple of days at a local resort, they encounter Benjamin, a man claiming to be in Puerto Rico for business.  Not feeling comfortable around the man, Steven, Shannon and their newly adopted daughter relocate to a different hotel on the island.  Steven goes out for a drink, and gets attacked by a local.  After leaving the police station, they head back to the hotel.  In the morning, they discover that the daughter they adopted has vanished.  Attempting to locate her, they discover the website they found her on no longer exists and neither does the office where they did business.  Like I said above, Reclaim is a pretty by-the-numbers thriller.  That doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s bad, just predictable.  When you have names like John Cusack and Ryan Phillipe attached to a movie like this, you expect one of those two to be the bad guy.  You can tell right off the bat that it’s Cusack.

Reclaim borrows from other thrillers in terms of how things play out.  It telegraphs exactly where it’s going next.  The thing about thrillers is their level of unpredictability.  I love films that tend to pull the rug out from under your feet.  You have no idea where it came from, and if it’s done right, it’s a very effective tool at getting you invested in the story and characters.  Reclaim doesn’t even ATTEMPT to surprise you, and that’s where it falls hard on its face.  It does nothing to advance the genre, and retreads the path of better movies.  It’s too bad, because the talent involved here is actually rather impressive.  John Cusack is quite a flexible actor and has a heck of a career.  Ryan Phillipe is also an accomplished actor.  Rachelle Lefevre….well, she’s pretty.  She overdoes it at times and that really pulls you out of it.  John Cusack is the one to watch here.  While Cusack really comes across as a nice guy in real life, he does a pretty decent job playing the bad guy.  His character is there only for the money and is getting short-changed by his boss as well, so he’s kind of strung-out to a certain degree.  He doesn’t go full blown crazy, surprisingly.  He keeps it pretty cool and low-key, which adds to the character’s menace.

While Reclaim is utterly predictable, it’s surprisingly still an intense ride with some pretty decent car chases.  Phillipe doesn’t play a Bryan Mills-type character, but rather an ordinary guy caught up in an extreme situation.  Unfortunately, the other characters are pretty dumb.  Steven easily loses an armed thug through the slums.  The police detective isn’t entirely reliable or willing to believe Steve or Shannon.  The writing is pretty lousy.  It’s not entirely surprising given that the writers hired for the film are clearly inexperienced.  The rest of Reclaim is technically sound.  The camera angles and wide-shots are used pretty well.  We also get to see some of Puerto Rico’s environment which is pretty spectacular.  I feel bad ragging on this movie, because a good chunk of it does seem pretty competent, but the rest of it is a jumbled mess.  I love a good thriller, and a thriller about human trafficking can produce some pretty intense moments.  Reclaim just doesn’t seem like it really gives the subject the respect and attention it needs.  I honestly can’t recommend this movie over something like Taken or Trade.  Those are two completely different kinds of movies.  One’s an action flick and the other is a drama, but both are pretty intense in their own way.  If you need a thriller dealing with this particular subject, there are better options out there.  Reclaim isn’t terrible, but it’s mediocre and completely forgettable.  I’d give this one a pass.  6/10.

Released: August 2014

Director: Phillip Noyce

Run Time: 93 Minutes

Rated: PG-13

Cast:
Jeff Bridges: The Giver
Brenton Thwaites: Jonas
Meryl Streep: Chief Elder
Katie Holmes: Mother
Alexander Skarsgard: Father
Odeya Rush: Fiona
Cameron Monaghan: Asher

It seems like today there are a lot of movies based on Young Adult novels like the The Hunger Games and The Maze Runner.  Most of these films seem to be centered around dystopian/utopian societies where people are divided into certain classes or categories.  They usually take place in a post-World War III world where most governments have collapsed and new leadership has taken over.   Reading the synopses for these movies, they all strike me as very similar and have very common themes.  When I was in junior high, we were given certain kinds of books to read in English class.  To Kill a Mockingbird was one, but the one that stood out for me was a Young Adult book called The Giver.  It was written by Lois Lowry back in 1993.  I’ve read it only once, and I don’t remember liking it all that much.  I was more into Stephen King at that point in my life.  There are certain aspects of the book I do remember, but I’ll do discuss those a little later.

The Giver begins in a world without color.  There’s no war, no famine, and no hostility of any kind among the citizens.  We are introduced to Jonas, a young man who is only days away from graduation and his friends Asher and Fiona.  They seem to get along very well, but Jonas begins to see strange things.  During the graduation ceremony, each graduate is given a place in society and a job to benefit said society.  Jonas is left out until the end when he’s chosen to become the next Receiver  of Memory.  The Receiver’s job is to keep track of all the memories of the old world to help advise the elders.  Jonas is to begin training under the current Receiver and is given rules that are completely of place with the rules of the Community.  During his training, Jonas begins to experience the memories of a society that has long since given them up, along with complex emotions and color.  He also begins to see a serious problem with the Community.  The story presented here is quite good, but it’s not entirely original.  It’s been told before in many forms, but the story was never presented to young people the way Lowry presented it.

The themes in The Giver aren’t particularly original, but they are presented in a visual way.  The use of color has always been important in film and storytelling.  It’s one of those ideas that was presented by Joseph Campbell and it’s just as relevant today as it was 30 or 40 years ago.  When The Giver opens, everything is literally devoid of color.  The idea of sameness presented in Lois Lowry’s novel was that it would help people ignore the ugly side of human nature.  There’s no war, no conflict, and no disobedience.  The Giver, both film and book, ask the question of what happens when we give up some of the very things that make us who and what we are.  The elimination of emotion by injection, the need for “precise” language and obedience are particularly poignant.  Each member of the Community are given specific jobs, certain girls are chosen to be birth mothers while others work in the nursery.  Some of the boys become workers and pilots.  These people aren’t given the choice to be what they want to be, only what society demands from them, and they seem to be content with that.  When Jonas begins to see colors, he begins a transformation that could change everything.  I realize that this seems a little metaphysical to a certain degree, but these themes are very important, especially in a story like this.  Yeah, the idea of a young man in search of an identity and rising up against an oppressive society has been before.  It’s been done better, I can tell you that.

Does that mean that The Giver is a bad movie?  Not at all.  I haven’t read the book in 15 years, so I couldn’t exactly tell you what the movie got wrong.  One of the things that surprised me about The Giver, was how surprisingly non-violent it was.  We do see images of violence, but the film is about as far from an action film as you can get, even though the third act seems to head in that direction.  But, I’m getting ahead of myself.  The performances are pretty decent, even though certain characters are pretty bland, but that’s because the world is bland.  When Jonas notices that Fiona’s hair-color has changed, that’s when we start seeing things from his perspective.  When we are not focused on Jonas, everything else goes back to black-and-white.  I like the use of color in this film, because it doesn’t all pop in at once.  No, we see glimpses of it:  An apple, Fiona’s eyes and hair, and other parts of the world start to fill in with color.  The film changes with Jonas, and his relationship with The Giver gets stronger.  Jeff Bridges does a fantastic job as the “Old Man” of the community.  Bridges has always been a great actor.  Brenton Thwaites as Jonas is amazing.  When he begins to experience emotions like love and joy, his face lights ups and he’s extraordinarily happy about it, but when he’s faced with painful memories like war and death his demeanor absolutely changes.  I think Thwaites as an actor has great potential, because he really dives into the character and gives Jonas the depth that the character requires.  I’ve never been a big fan of Meryl Streep however, I don’t know why.  I guess some of the movies I’ve seen her in I wasn’t impressed with.  I’m not entirely sure why she’s here, other than to play the obvious villain.

This is not a perfect movie, though.  I’ve seen movies like this a million times where one person becomes a rebel against an oppressive government.  From Star Wars to The Hunger Games, it’s the same kind of structure that really keeps The Giver from standing out from the crowd.  As a result, the story is predictable, especially to those who have read the book.  Katie Holmes is just….blah.  I’ve never thought much of her as an actress.  The look and the feel of the film are just too much like what has already been released.  So, The Giver is a little late to the party.  Overall, it’s a surprisingly thoughtful and entertaining little picture that could.  Some of the performances are a little off-color, but it’s not the worst I’ve seen.  The messages and the theme of identity and what it means to be human are surprisingly well thought-out.  It’s a visually interesting movie with some great thematic elements.  Jeff Bridges and Brenton Thwaites steal the show.  They are fantastic.  I hope to see Thwaites in more stuff.  At the end of the day, I give The Giver a solid 8/10.  It’s not groundbreaking, but it’s not bad at all.

Movie Trailer

Released: August 2014

Director: Lloyd Lee Barnett

Run Time: 84 Minutes

Rated: Not Rated

Cast:
Christian Oliver: Cage
Les Brandt: Surge
Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa: Fumitaka
Ernie Reyes Jr: Hiroshi

When I was a kid, I used to watch a lot of ninja movies.  During Halloween, I would’ve also dressed up as a ninja.  That’s how cool ninjas were.  I loved the whole ninja deal: the swords, sai, star shurikens, caltrops, and the coolest thing: the smoke pellets.  I won’t bore you with the history of the ninja, but I will say that it is very interesting.  During the 80s, ninja movies were very popular.  One of the reasons they were popular is because the movies showed the ninja as acrobatic assassins, even in broad daylight.  Some of the more interesting ninja movies that were released during that period were: Enter The Ninja, 9 Deaths of the Ninja, Revenge of the Ninja, Ninja III: The Domination, American Ninja, and Rage of Honor.  Even without those movies, you still had the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, both the cartoon series and the movies.  It didn’t seem like the ninja were going out of style.  Unfortunately, they did.  We haven’t seen a proper ninja movie until Ninja Assassin was released a couple of years ago.  Along with that movie, we also got Ninja and Ninja: Shadow of a Tear starring Scott Adkins.  Somewhere along the way, somebody got the bright idea to remake The Warriors movie with ninjas.  Ninjas. With superpowers.  It’s called: Ninja Apocalypse.

The film takes place somewhere in the future after a nuclear war has ravaged the world.  Among the survivors are several clans of ninja warriors who have been mutated.  Certain clans exhibit certain powers.  One clan wields the power of lightening while another can throw fireballs.  Bringing all the clans together to face a growing threat is Fumitaka(Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa), and his second-in-command Hiroshi(Ernie Reyes, Jr.).  Sadly, Fumitaka is assassinated and one of the clans has been framed for the murder.  If you think that story’s ridiculous, watch the trailer.  Ridiculous?  This movie is bat-shit crazy.  You’ve got one clan that can toss around lightening, one clan that throws fireballs, another can teleport, another that’s reptilian and moves fast, and you’ve got another that can shape-shift.  Sounds awesome, right?  Yes….and no.

First off, the concept is actually pretty cool: A post-apocalyptic ninja movie.  I certainly wasn’t expecting that to happen.  Secondly, the powers are used on a regular basis.  Next up: Cary Tagawa and Ernie Reyes Jr.  Tagawa’s just awesome in nearly everything that he’s done thus far, and Reyes still moves like he did back in the early 90s, and he chews the scenery like you wouldn’t believe.  Finally, the fight choreography is actually not half-bad.  No wires are used to enhance the moves, so what you see is what you get.  Some of the fights are actually really good.  Especially the final battle.  And finally: Zombies.  Yes: Zombies.  These are zombies that also happen to regenerate.  That’s pretty good stuff, right?  So, what went wrong?  The answer: Everything else.

Wow, talk about piss-poor visual effects.  Some of the backgrounds look like they were poorly Photoshopped.  The CGI is barely functional at best, and horribly laughable at worst.  The acting is uniformly horrendous.  Cary Tagawa is only in the film for a few minutes before he’s killed off, and Ernie Reyes Jr?  At least he’s not playing an annoying brat like he did in Red Sonja.  This movie also has some of the WORST dialogue I’ve ever seen in a movie.  Yes, even worse than Star Wars: Attack of the Clones.  There’s really only one way that can sum up my reaction to the film’s dialogue.

Ninja Apocalypse is the “Sharknado” of martial arts films.  I’m not kidding.  Yeah, it’s bad.  It’s really, really bad.  But it’s awesome at the same time.  It kinda works, because there was some effort put into this movie.  I understand that nobody sets out to make a bad movie……I hope.  This one however, got screwed by some horrendously atrocious writing.  The stuff it gets right, it does fairly well.  As a result, the film is a mixed bag.  On the one hand, you’ve got some genuinely awesome fight sequences, with some interesting visual effects, and ninjas, but on the other hand: Everything else.  Although, with a name like Ninja Apocalypse, you probably know what you’re getting yourself into.  This seems contradictory, but I’m giving the film an 8/10 for it’s audacity and nifty action sequences.  Like Sharknado, I don’t think it would be as interesting as it is with better visual effects.  Sounds weird doesn’t it?  I say: Give it a rent.  Just be prepared for more than a few face-palm moments.