Month: June 2019

Released: March 2017(USA)

Director: Deven Bhojani

Not Rated

Run Time: 122 Minutes

Genre: Bollywood/Action

Distributor: Reliance Entertainment

Cast:
Vidyut Jammwal: Karanvir Dogra
Adah Sharma: Bhavna Reddy
Esha Gupta: Maria
Freddy Daruwala: Bhaktawar

I can honestly say that I have now seen movies from every populated continent on the planet: North and South America, Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia.  Each continent and subsequent countries have a tendency to bring their own unique flavor to the film industry, especially when it comes to certain genres.  Action movies from China have a distinct look and feel and are very different from somewhere like France.  Obviously, Hollywood is the biggest film industry in the world, so the influence that Hollywood has had on other film industries around the world is incalculable.  There are certain countries in Asia that have recently really begun to churn out some pretty solid action flicks.  Thailand, Indonesia, the Phillipines, Cambodia, and Vietnam have been putting out some pretty solid flicks over the past decade.  One country that’s managed to surprise me a bit in the action film scene is…well….India.  I got my first taste of Bollywood action movies with films like Heropanti and Baaghi, starring Tiger Schroff.  Let me tell you:  Bollywood is an experience.  I just checked out another action film from India called Commando 2: The Black Money Trail.  Did India surprise me again?  Uh….yes….and no.

The film opens as special forces agent Karan infiltrates a criminal hideout to take down a notorious money launderer.  Finding out that the actual leader behind the scheme is in another country, Karan sets out to find the criminal known as Vicky and to locate the billions of rupees that were stolen.  Look, I’m not going to tell you that I’m some kind of expert on Bollywood movies or how they are made and what they entail.  My experience with Bollywood movies is very, very limited.  Three movies, in fact.  But I did manage to brave the strange and the bizarre that is Bollywood, and there’s a lot of interesting stuff happening there.  The aformentioned Heropanti and Baaghi films are indicative of that.  That being said, the story-telling and film-making standards in India are vastly different to their Western and Eastern counterparts.  It all comes down to cultural differences, of which there are many.  With that in mind, the story in Commando 2 is not very good.  I haven’t seen the first film, mostly because I can’t find it anywhere, and it has absolutely nothing to do with the 1985 Schwarzenegger film.  The problem here is that the story is not very engaging, and that’s most likely due to my lack of knowledge about what’s happening in India right now, outside of what’s being said in the mainstream media.  It also comes down to the writing, which, even by Bollywood standards, is not very good.  The twists and turns that are constantly being thrown at the audience make no sense whatsoever and the film is trying to be smarter and more clever than it really needs to be.  It’s okay for a story to be simplistic, and more often than not, that can engage the audience a lot more than something that is convoluted.  The complex story-telling here just doesn’t work, at least not for me.

The acting here is…..passable.  Again, the standards that I use to judge acting in other films kind of has to be adjusted a bit for Bollywood movies.  Vidyut Jammwal does a lot of mugging for the camera and really does nothing more than that outside of the action beats.  The ladies in the film are obviously very beautiful and do a very good job looking fantastic.  But that’s really about all they do.  I’m not necessarily faulting the actresses for that.  Again, the writing comes into play here.  Vidyut is a martial artist and stunt-man, so I can forgive him somewhat for being bland as an actor, but he does deliver some pretty good stunts and fights.  There’s a lot of gorgeous people here, just not a whole lot of substance.

The movie opens with what I consider to be the best action sequence in the entire film.  Vidyut’s character storms a criminal hideout taking down crooks left and right with his flips, kicks and gunshots.  It’s actually pretty good.  Some of the fight choreography isn’t half-bad, and some of the camerawork is pretty solid, as in we can see what’s going on.  Unfortunately, even with a solid action star like Mr. Jammwal, a lot of the later action sequences aren’t a whole lot of fun, because they feel very generic.  The director of the film is clearly inexperienced in making action films, because the majority of action is flat and mostly uninteresting.  The director is apparently a veteran of comedies and such, and it’s really obvious that he just doesn’t understand how action is supposed to work.  The final battle that takes place on a roof-top involves a surprising amount of wire-work, which bugs me, because most of the action in the film is wireless.  The stunts and the parkour sequences don’t use wires.  Also, the extreme use of slow-motion through-out these sequences just slow the movie down.  Slow-motion is a fantastic tool when you want to high-light a specific moment.  Here, it’s used way too much and is very distracting.

Ultimately, I can’t recommend this one, even to casual action or Bollywood fans.  It’s not very good.  The writing is terrible with some really half-baked performances.  I mean, there is no chemistry between the characters whatsoever.  A lot of the action sequences are very pedestrian, even by Bollywood standards, and the whole thing just feels uninspired.  While I was expecting musical numbers to show up during the film, as they tend to do in Bollywood films, the only musical sequence shows up in the end credits.  I think those would have spiced up the goings-on considerably.  Yeah, this isn’t a good one.  Skip it.  Check out Baaghi or Heropanti instead, if you want your Bollywood action fix.

My Final Recommendation: 3/10.

Released: March 2019

Director: S. Craig Zahler

Rated R

Run Time: 159 Minutes

Distributor: Lionsgate Studios/Summit Entertainment

Genre: Crime/Thriller/Drama

Cast:
Mel Gibson: Brett Ridgeman
Vince Vaughn: Anthony Lurasetti
Tory Kittles: Henry Johns
Michael Jai White: Biscuit
Thomas Kretschmann: Lorentz Vogelmann
Jennifer Carpenter: Kelly Summer
Laurie Holden: Melanie Ridgeman
Don Johnson: Chief Lt. Calvert

A few years back, a tiny indie film showed up on my radar: Bone Tomahawk.  It was written and directed by an unknown director/writer, S. Craig Zahler.  The reason I payed attention to the film was because of the cast: Kurt Russell, Patrick Wilson, and Richard Jenkins.  Kurt Russell was form-fitted to the Western, as he had proven with Tombstone.  So, I thought Bone Tomahawk was going to be another low-budget indie Western.  In many ways, it was a typical Western, but towards the end of the film, it took a huge left turn into the horror genre.  The shift didn’t really feel out of place for the story.  Bone Tomahawk was one of the biggest surprises I had seen in years, and it stuck with me.  Zahler’s second effort, Brawl in Cell Block 99 took the grind-house root and set it in a dark and gloomy prison starring the most unlikely of actors, Vince Vaughn.  Again, Zahler managed to impress me even more as a film-maker.  So, when compared with his first two major efforts, how does Dragged Across Concrete stack up?

In the fictional city of Bulwark, veteran street cop Brett Ridgeman and his partner, Anthony Lurasetti are staking out an apartment building where a known drug trafficker lives.  The arrest of the drug dealer was apparently far more brutal than it needed to be, because the next day, their boss calls them in and suspends them for 6 weeks without pay.  For Brett, this is hard to deal with, because he doesn’t make enough money on the job to be able to support his family, and this suspension is putting him in a very tough place.  See, he and his family live in a questionable part of town where Brett’s daughter gets bullied every time she goes to school.  In order to better provide for them, Brett and his partner dive into the criminal underworld to rob criminals who are targeting a particular bank.  S. Craig Zahler’s background is in writing and it really shows in his films.  He was a novelist before making movies, but bringing that experience to a visual medium is actually a really interesting thing to see.  The story in Dragged Across Concrete feels like it comes from a crime novel.  It’s a good story with some real weight behind it.  The way the whole thing plays out is very different than your average crime thriller.  It goes to some very dark and bleak territory, and Zahler is not afraid to show the audience what happens when it does.  I will warn you now, this is a very grim tale, but it’s all the better for it.  Now, some people may scoff at the run time of 159 minutes, but it doesn’t feel that long to me.  It’s definitely a slow-burner of a film, but there’s a reason for that.  Zahler’s approach to films like this has always been very deliberate.  It allows the audience to ride with the characters and see what they see.  It also kind of sets them up in a way that when the violence does happen, it’s quick, brutal and shocking.

As an actor, Mel Gibson is unlike any other.  He’s got equal doses of charisma and talent, and while he plays it more low-key here, it’s still Mel, and he’s still incredible to watch.  He plays Brett Ridgeman, a veteran cop that’s become more racist and intolerant over the years.  Some people might see this as some kind of parallel for his actual life, but I really don’t think so.  Mel’s got demons for sure, and they unfortunately got out some years back that cost Gibson a lot of credibility in Hollywood.  That being said, his ability to deliver a convincing performance hasn’t diminished one bit.  In fact, I think he’s actually gotten better over the years.  He’s definitely come a long way since Mad Max and I still think he’s a fantastic actor.  Vince Vaughn has become an actor to really watch over the past few years.  I’ve never been a fan of Vaughn’s comedic offerings.  It’s not my brand of humor.  However, his more dramatic roles have shown that Vince has an incredible range.  Look at films like Hacksaw Ridge, Brawl in Cell Block 99, and even way back in 1997 with The Lost World: Jurassic Park.  I loved his performance in that film because he wasn’t deliberately trying to be funny.  He plays Anthony Lurasetti in Dragged Across Concrete.  He definitely brings a unique side to the character that is also a little racist, but also knows when something isn’t particularly right.  He balances that moral scale with a skill that you generally don’t see from a lot of actors these days.  You also have awesome performances from Don Johnson, Michael Jai White, Laurie Holden and Jennifer Carpenter.  The one guy you should really pay attention to is Tory Kittles as Henry Johns, recently released from prison and back into the criminal underworld.  Tory is fantastic.

Dragged Across Concrete is not an action movie.  Far from it.  It’s a crime drama, in point of fact.  The fact that it takes so long to get to the violence, makes said violence all the more potent.  There is no CGI here, it’s all done in camera with actual prosthetics and special effects.  Let me tell you, when the violence hits, it hits hard.  This is a pretty mean movie in terms of its violence and the people that it’s inflicted upon.  This film is surprisingly less violent than Zahler’s previous work, but it definitely doesn’t skimp on the blood and gore.  What also sells this film is how it looks.  The cinematography is incredible.  There are a ton of shots where the camera just doesn’t move and focuses on a very small number of characters.  There’s this one scene where Brett and Anthony are staking out a robber who is about to make his move.  This scene is interesting because of how the camera focuses on the two leads.  You see Anthony eating a sandwich and you can also hear it.  It’s often the little details that can make a lot of difference.  That scene is amusing and uncomfortable at the same time.

If there’s really an issue that I have with the film is that some of the characters here exist only as victims that need to be saved, especially the women.  While I’m sure that Zahler knew what he was doing when he wrote these characters, I just can’t escape the feeling that some of these characters and actors got shortchanged.  Also, a lot of these characters aren’t necessarily likable, but again, Zahler was trying to create a world that really pulled no punches and that unexpected things could happen, and they do.  Dragged Across Concrete is not a film that’s going to be for everyone.  That much is clear.  It’s long and there is definitely a degree of mean-spiritedness that could be very off-putting to certain audiences, but I think that Zahler is completely aware of that.  Dragged Across Concrete is not a conventional crime thriller and Zahler is not a conventional film-maker.  Because of that, I really enjoy his work.  Is the film as brutal as other critics have said?  It can be.  I mean, by the end of the film, you’re probably going to feel like you’ve been dragged across concrete.  It doesn’t hold back and it shouldn’t.  I can’t recommend this film for everyone, but for those that are willing to tolerate a long run time and some pretty dark and gritty material, there’s a lot to like here.

My Final Recommendation: 9/10.

Released: June 2019

Director: Simon Kingberg

Rated PG-13

Run Time: 113 Minutes

Distributor: 20th Century Fox

Genre: Action/Science Fiction

Cast:
James McAvoy: Professor Charles Xavier
Michael Fassbender: Erik Lehnsherr/Magneto
Jennifer Lawrence: Raven/Mystique
Nicholas Hoult: Hank McCoy/Beast
Sophie Turner: Jean Grey/Phoenix
Tye Sheridan: Scott Summers/Cyclops
Alexandra Shipp: Ororo Munroe/Storm
Evan Peters: Peter Maximoff/Quicksilver
Kodi Smit-McPhee: Kurt Wagner/Nightcrawler
Jessica Chastain: Vuk

2019 will be remembered as the year when things came to an end, at least in film and television.  This year, we saw the conclusion of the current iteration of the MCU with Avengers: Endgame.  We also saw the end of the epic HBO series, Game of Thrones.  Other film series are also coming to an end.  Star Wars will see the final chapter in the Skywalker sage come to a close in December with The Rise of Skywalker.  The final film in the Rambo films will debut in September with Last Blood.  Some of these franchises have survived for decades.  One of my favorite film franchises in the past 20 years has been X-Men.  I’ve been watching these films since the original film in 2000.  It’s a franchise that’s seen its fair share of ups and downs, just like any film series.  I’ve been a huge fan of the rebooted films since First Class.  Days of Future Past was a fantastic entry that combined both generations of films, but things started on a downward spiral with X-Men Apocalypse.  Well, we now have the final film in the rebooted series: Dark Phoenix.  Does the film bring the current iteration of the franchise to a solid and satisfying conclusion?  In short……..no.  Not even close.

The opening of the film sees young Jean Grey with her parents as she inadvertently causes an accident that ends up with the death of her mother.  Professor Charles Xavier takes her to his school so she can be safe and learn to control her power.  In 1992, a space shuttle is launched but encounters a mysterious cloud of energy, so the X-Men are called in to help deal with the situation.  They succeed in saving the crew of the shuttle, but only because Jean Grey is using her power to hold the craft together when the energy cloud hits her full force.  She awakens at the school with little memory of what happened, but soon she begins to manifest a new kind of power which brings the unwanted attention of otherworldly visitors.  This isn’t the first time that film-makers tried to bring the Dark Phoenix story-line to the big screen.  It was last attempted 12 years ago with X-Men: The Last Stand.  How did they manage to screw up that story-line TWICE?  I’ll tell you how:  By handing directing, writing, and producing responsibilities to Simon Kinberg, who wrote the story for The Last Stand, funnily enough.  The decision give a film of this size to an untested director was an extremely bad move.  They couldn’t give it to Brian Singer, who has been dealing with….legal issues, but they couldn’t be bothered to give it to the guy that directed First Class?  Dark Phoenix is one of the most poorly thought out and executed films I’ve seen in a long time, and with this being the last film in such an iconic franchise, it feels like I got slapped in the face with a cold, wet fish.  There are continuity issues abound.  We first saw the Phoenix manifest itself in Jean Grey in the previous film, but why was that never mentioned again?  The subplot with aliens coming after Jean for her power seems very tacked on and pointless.  The whole thing feels poorly put together.

The bad writing goes far beyond the main story-line.  All the characters in Dark Phoenix are conspicuously one-dimensional, which bugs the hell out of me, because these characters are some of my favorites in the series.  I don’t know how Kinberg managed to do it, but he managed to make me hate Professor X.  I’m not lying.  The character is a goddamned jack-ass in this film and his motivations for doing what he did to Jean are completely illogical.  What’s worse, is that they pulled the same crap in The Last Stand.  They made the character unlikable in that one too.  Jean Grey doesn’t do much beyond complaining that she can’t control her power.  Everyone else is pretty much pushed to the side and not given a whole to do.  The villains in the film are easily the worst I’ve seen in a comic book movie.  Marvel’s MCU may not have had the greatest villain line-up, but they were at the very least entertaining and more than one-dimensional.  Here?  Aliens.  In the comics and the animated series, the X-Men have come up against multiple alien races over the years, but those races were at least interesting.  Here, they are nothing more than one-note shape-shifting baddies with a predictable motivation:  World domination.  SERIOUSLY?!?!  Magneto, in the previous films and mediums, at least had a legitimate reason for doing what he did, but these aliens?  You could swap them out with a bunch of power-hungry Russians and the results would still be the same.  The acting is what kind of saves the movie for me.  For as much as I dislike Professor X in this film, James McAvoy nails it again, as does Michael Fassbender.  I’ve actually liked Sophie Turner’s….turn as Jean Grey and she still does a pretty decent job here.

The estimated budget for this film is said to be around $200,000,000.  Why the hell doesn’t it look like it?  I’ve noticed that since First Class, some of the make-up effects and CGI have gotten worse.  Look at Mystique, for example.  Compare the make-up on her character to that of Rebecca Romijn in the original X-Men trilogy?  The difference is night and day.  The actual outfits that the heroes wear are also ridiculously cheap-looking.  The CGI in certain parts of the film, especially on the train sequence at the end are laughably bad.  Some of them are even worse than in X-Men Origins: Wolverine.  Yeah, I said it.  This is the worst-looking X-Men I’ve ever seen.  Action-wise, it’s clear to me that Simon Kinberg had no clue what he was doing.  The cinematography is all sorts of wrong, the framing is off, and there’s a bunch of shaky-cam during certain scenes that really feel out-of-place.  The worst sin that this movie committed, though, was that it was boring.  For a film that doesn’t even run two hours, it felt like twice that.  The musical score by Hans Zimmer is pretty damned good, though.

Apparently, there were a lot of extensive re-shoots in the film, especially the third act, because it felt too much like another Marvel film.  Honestly, this film needed more re-writes and a better director.  I can forgive X-Men: The Last Stand for having a lackluster story, because it still ended up being a fun action flick.  I could even forgive X-Men Origins: Wolverine for being too ambitious and failing.  It least it tried and I can respect that.  Dark Phoenix doesn’t even try to rise above the banality of its own generic story, and that’s what the whole movie is:  Generic.  The Dark Phoenix story-line deserves better than what it got here.  With Disney in full control of the property now, maybe something can happen, but it’s going to be a while before we see another X-Men.  It’s just as well.  I hate to come down so hard on a film that I wanted to like so much, but I have to be honest: Dark Phoenix is NOT a good movie.  I’ve heard people saying that Phoenix is the worst X-Men film yet, I would agree.  I honestly hope that maybe we get an alternative version of the film like we got with Days of Future Past, because this version of Dark Phoenix is one that shouldn’t have risen from the ashes.

My Final Recommendation: 4/10

Released: June 2018

Director: Mercedes Bryce Morgan

Run Time: 104 Minutes

Not Rated

Distributor: MGM/UA Studios

Genre: Science Fiction

Cast:
Ellie Gall: Catherine Langford
Connor Trinneer: Professor Paul Langford
Aylam Orian: Dr. Wilhelm Brucke
Philip Alexander: Captain James Beal
Shvan Aladdin: Wasif

I’m a huge fan of science fiction, be it comics, video games, movies or television.  There’s just something absolutely incredible about the genre that sets my imagination on fire.  Whether it’s Star Trek, Star Wars, or 2001: A Space Odyssey, these films offer a unique glimpse into the ideas and imaginations of the people that make them.  2001 is by far my favorite science fiction film of all time.  It’s taken me some years to realize, but hey, better late than never, right?  I love smart science fiction in particular like 2001, Annihilation, and Arrival.  These are amazing examples of smart science fiction.  That being said, I also enjoy some really silly science fiction like Armageddon, Independence Day, and The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai.  They don’t necessarily have to be smart to be entertaining.  One of my favorite pop-corn sci-fi movies during the 90’s was a little flick called Stargate starring Kurt Russell and James Spader.  Goofy as hell, but it had some really interesting ideas with some pretty good visual effects and some pretty clever dialogue.  It was a lot of fun.  The film ultimately inspired a television show, SG-1, which would run for almost 10 seasons, with two live-action spin-off series, Atlantis and Universe.  There were also a number of direct-to-video movies that were half-way decent.  So, imagine my surprise when I look on Amazon Prime for something to watch, and I come across this little title called Stargate Origins: Catherine.  I had literally never heard of this one before, and very few science fiction movies go under the radar.  There’s a reason for that.  Origins is complete horseshit.

This “film”/miniseries takes place 10 years after the opening scene in the original film.  It follows Professor Paul Langford and his daughter Catherine as they study the circular object that they discovered in 1928, the Stargate.  It seems that they are not the only ones interested in the object as the Nazis, led by Dr. Wilhelm Brucke, show up with the intention to use it to find some kind of super-weapon that Hitler can use.  What the hell is this?!  Seriously.  Who is the fucking idiot responsible for green-lighting this?  Who thought it was a good idea to explore the time between the opening 1928 scene in the film and the 1994 period?  It wasn’t something that people were asking for let alone needed to know.  So, the Stargate was discovered in Giza in 1928, and then the film cuts to 1994.  It seemed pretty straight-forward to me.  Oh, and bringing in the Nazis, because why?  I know they’re the go-to bad guys for movies that take place in the 30s, but you could be a little less obvious about it.  The story is incredibly idiotic that features Ellie Gall’s character basically doing the exact same thing that Spader’s character did in the movie.  There’s also this other subplot of Aset who has this “forbidden” child that absolutely goes nowhere.  This film is full of poor plots and ding-dong ideas that thankfully don’t go anywhere.

If the story wasn’t bad enough, it gets worse.  The acting in this…this…thing is beyond abominable.  It is that bad.  I’ve seen a lot of direct-to-video movies that have some pretty horrendous acting, but none of that compares to this drivel.  The Nazi characters are so over-the-top, they’re cartoonish.  Nazis were a lot of things, but cartoonish really wasn’t one of them.  They were truly evil in every sense of the word.  But these characters are so over-the-top and hammy, you can’t take them seriously as a threat.  Let’s also talk about the “alien” villains.  The performances with these characters make you want to punch baby Jesus, or in this case, baby Tut.  Honestly, the only ones that manage to salvage ANY kind of dignity are Ellie Gall as Catherine and Conner Trinneer as her father.  Most people will recognize Conner Trinneer as Trip from Star Trek: Enterprise.  He’s not actually that bad here.  But honestly, not even him nor Ellie could withstand the dreadful dialogue.  It’s worse than Star Wars: Attack of the Clones.  Yeah, I said it.  This whole project was clearly written by people who didn’t bother taking a class in high school or college.  It’s beyond amateurish.

The visual effects for the original film were pretty good for the time, and they still hold up fairly well.  Even SG-1 had some really solid visual effects.  Here?  It’s obvious the visual effects were NOT in the budget.  The actual Stargate effect is an extremely cheap knock-off of what they did in the main film.  Not only that, they had the audacity to use parts of the actual opening scene for this film, and cut just before we actually see Professor Langford’s face.  I understand the low-budget nature of films like this, and you have to get creative with how you approach visual effects and writing, but this was just god-awful.  I’m amazed they actually got blanks to use for the guns they used in the film.  The action sequences are high-school level of dreadful.  No, scratch that, I remember doing better action sequences for my film class in junior high.  Poorly choreographed, unconvincing and incredibly boring.  What else is boring?  The costume designs and make-up.  Holy shit.  A drunk cheerleader could do better make-up than what we see here.  The costumes and sets are equally bland.  I understand that the budget for Origins was pretty small, but that’s no excuse for hiring people that really don’t have a fucking clue about what makes Stargate so interesting.  The inconsistencies, the continuity errors, and overall complete lack of effort by nearly everybody involved, basically makes this a piss-poor fan film.  I’ve seen some fan films that are really good, but this wouldn’t be one of them.

Stargate is one of my favorite action films ever, and that’s because there was a ton of effort put into it.  From the set designs, which were epic to the action sequences that were inventive and the acting which was superb.  Even the smaller details like the particular dialect of the ancient Egyptian language being spoken was incredible.  The series that followed expanded on the mythology to a degree that we haven’t really seen since.  Do we get any of that here?  No.  What we get is a dry, barren, sand-heap of a film/series that really has no reason to exist.  There are very few movies and TV shows out there that can truly piss me off.  Stargate Origins managed to do just that.  It’s lifeless, dull, and quite frankly, a complete waste of fucking time.  Don’t bother.  Leave this one buried in the sand where it belongs.  This is probably the worst thing I’ve ever seen.

My Final Recommendation: It is scientifically proven that Stargate Origins fucking sucks.  .5/10