Aug 18 2015
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Reviews

“TRAINWRECK” Review (✫✫✫1/2)

Trainwreck-Amy-Schumer-and-Bill-Hader 2

Not as much of one as you thought.

I wonder how many women will look at Amy Townsend in Trainwreck and relate to her from personal experience. If any of them do, I question how they are still breathing, or speaking in coherent sentences. Amy is the opitamy of a disaster in this movie. She’s a woman who drinks a lot, smokes a lot, lies a lot, and has sex a lot, with way too many sexual partners for comfort. If this woman was an airship, she’d be the Hindenburg.

There’s only one person to blame for Amy’s behavior besides herself: her father Gordon (Colin Quinn), who humorously compares sexual partners to toy dolls while explaining to Amy and her sister Kim (Brie Larson) why he’s getting divorced with their mother. He tells them to repeat after him as if he’s conducting an orchestra: “Monogamy isn’t realistic! Monogamy isn’t realistic!”

Twenty years later, Amy is practicing her father’s advice. Our first glimpse at seeing Amy Schumer as the character involves her making out with a man and taking her clothes off, only to see him take his pants off and realize she’s taking on too much for her own good. This isn’t Amy’s first rodeo. She’ll hit-it-and-quit-it with guys like she’s skeet-shooting clay at a shooting range, and she’s an expert marksman. Once she’s had her fill, she dumps them quicker than Sunday’s recycling. Her excuses after being asked out: “Oh, I’m sorry, but I have plans!”, “Sorry, but I don’t think you’re my type.”, and “Sorry, but I’m not really into that.” That last one is true.

Suddenly, she meets this one guy that seems completely different. Aaron Conners (Bill Hader) is a sports doctor who tends to players such as LeBron James and Amar’e Stoudemire. Amy gets assigned by her magezine to write a profile on Conners, but she ends up taking Conners home instead. But when she does, she also does something she never does with another guy: she stays the night. Now questioning her own lifestyle and what she really wants, Amy decides whether or not she wants to remain a trainwreck for the rest of her life.

I’ll start with the best thing about this movie: Amy. No, not the character, the actor. Amy Schumer not only portrays the lead role in the film: she wrote her. Schumer is credited for the film’s concept just as much as she is for the film’s character. In a way, I think she wrote this film for herself. The script is written with an honesty and integrity that is rare with most of Hollywood’s screenplays, but with a humor and lightheartedness to it that is equally as rare and refreshing. I asked a friend of mine what the movie was about before going in to see it. Was it a love story? Was it a cautionary tale about substance and alcohol abuse? Was it about the struggle of being a middle-aged woman in America?

My friends response was “Yes.”

Oh, don’t get me wrong. The movie is incredibly profane and inappropriate. It deserves it’s R rating in every sense and fashion of the word. F words fly out as frequently as oxygen does. Drug use and excessive drinking follows Amy everywhere like a bad, never-ending hangover. Cleavage is the movie’s guilty pleasure. Sex, even more so.

If this were any other movie, I would knock off points for this movie’s unabashedly loose image and dirty humor. I do the same thing with excessive, over-the-top action and unnecessary violence. Yet, I raved about Mad Max: Fury Road a few months ago for the very things I usually hate in films. Here is another movie subverting my expectations and surprising me in ways that I wasn’t expecting.

How exactly does it do that? Well, the language is bad, definitely, but it’s honest. It’s reflective of this day and age’s mentality, and the clever and genuine dialogue shows that the script is smart enough to substantiate the bad language. The drugs and alcohol usually imply a bad mentality, but does it really when it shows us how much of a toll it takes on its main character? Other movies use drugs and alcohol for offensively comedic effect: this one uses it to show another side to it that is less funny. And the sexual content, while inappropriate, also has something important to say about human relationships. I.e. what would you rather have: multiple temporary romances, or one lasting affection?

This is what is so special about this movie: it pretends to be dumber than it actually is. It disguises itself as a stupid and obnoxious comedy, like The Change-Up or The Hangover, but then you watch it and you see the many truths that it carries with it. It’s not only funny and entertaining to watch: it’s also morally and emotionally binding. To me, that’s the most important kind of entertainment out there: the kind that leaves an impact.

This is, of course, a romantic comedy. What’s all in romantic comedies? Cheesy endings, that’s what. And just like all romantic comedies, this movie is just as guilty for having one as well. But the movie itself is not cheesy, and it’s main star carries the weight of the film well all by herself with both heart and humor. Trainwreck is a good title for this movie. Beautiful disaster would be another.

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Aug 06 2015
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Top 3 Planned Sony Releases To 2019

Out of the gate, and into the fire.

Sony Pictures Entertainment recently published a list of its planned film releases for up until 2019. While some films included on the list were releases most already knew about (Paul Feig’s Ghosbusters and The Magnificent Seven remake), there were a few surprises on there that peaked heads and boggled minds. Here are the top three.

Bad Boys 3 & 4

Yeah, you knew this was coming eventually. The original cop-buddy movie directed by Michael Bay and starring Martin Lawrence and Will Smith is getting not one, but two movie sequels. Bad Boys 3 has a planned release date of February 17, 2017, while Bad Boys 4 is slated for the summer of 2019. While there are no confirmations of Lawrence and Smith currently on board for it just yet, it’s hard to imagine Sony making this movie without them. Unless, of course, they’re as stupid as Universal Pictures was when they decided to make a Blues Brothers sequel without John Belushi.

Either way, this isn’t so much bad news as it is confusing. Everything is getting a sequel nowadays, so it’s no surprise Bad Boys is getting one either. My only question is why did you wait 12 freaking years to do it? Nobody cares about Bad Boys anymore. We haven’t seen anything in over 10 years, so why would we get hyped up now when it’s been dead for so long?

Look at Sin City. There was a nine-year gap in between that film and A Dame To Kill for. That film ended up bombing at the box office and losing half of its budget in the process. What does Sony hope to achieve now that it’s bringing these two clumsy cops back?

We’ll see how it performs in 2017, but for now, don’t wait up to be read your miranda rights.

Uncharted

Another attempt at a successful film adaptation of a video game, Uncharted tells the story of Nathan Drake, a treasure hunter who is searching for his ancestor’s long-lost loot on the shore of El Dorado. The award-winning video game series is developed by creators Naughty Dog, with its fourth installment expected for release in early 2016.

Other than the planned release date for the film adaptation (June 2017), there isn’t much to go on for this film adaptation. Horrible Bosses director Seth Gordon was originally scheduled to direct, but left the project after citing creative differences with Sony. Screenwriter Mark Boal is currently attached to write the screenplay, and while his filmography seems a little too serious for the tone of Uncharted (his credits include The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty), a closer look observes that he actually has writing experience for video games too, credited for writing the story to Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare.

Either way, it looks like this adaptation is in an interesting position for a 2017 release. With it being among the movies included on Sony’s release list, we can definitely expect some new details to emerge soon.

The Dark Tower

Probably the most exciting release to see on Sony’s slate is Stephen King’s The Dark Tower, which follows the story of gunslinger Roland Deschain and his quest to find a dark tower which he believes to be the center of all universes. The fantasy series has been described by many as the famous writer’s magnus opus, and the realization of a film adaptation has been fought for years now by filmmakers including Ron Howard and J.J. Abrams.

It has been stuck in development hell since 2007, but it looks like it’s finally happening.

The first film’s expected release date is January 2017. While there is currently no cast or writers attached, director Nikolaj Arcel (A Royal Affair, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo) is attached to the project. If Sony is confident enough to put this on their release calendar, then there must be negotiations going on behind closed doors that Sony isn’t ready to reveal yet.

Either way, one of King’s most cherished stories is getting traction on being put onto the big screen. King fans have no reason not to be excited.

You can read the full list of Sony’s release schedule up to 2019 here. In the meantime, what release are you most excited for? Leave your comments in the section below.

– David Dunn

SOURCE: Forbes, Deadline
Jul 31 2015
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Naruto Movie Reportedly In The Works

You ninja fans out there might have to get your shuriken stars ready. A live-action Naruto film is coming.

Variety broke the news a mere hour ago. Production studio Lionsgate is in negotiations for the film rights to a Naruto movie, and they’re tapping visual effects artist Michael Gracey to direct the film.

Based on the Japanese manga written and illustrated by artist Masashi Kishimoto, Naruto tells the story of a village ninja who grew up alone and hated by all of the townspeople for reasons unbeknownst to him. Wanting to redeem himself in the eyes of the village people, Naruto trains hard, aspiring to become Hokage: the headmaster and leader of the village.

Being a fan of Naruto since high school, I couldn’t be more excited at hearing that a live action film is in the works. And yet, I have concerns about this project. First of all, Avi Arad is producing through his company Arad Productions alongside Erik Feig, Geoff Shaveitz and Kelly O’Malley. While Arad has been involved of many successful studio projects (X2, Spider-Man 2, Iron Man), he’s equally been involved with many busts as well (Bratz: The Movie, Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance, Robosapien: Rebooted). Arad has been involved in a number of successful movies, but just because he’s on board does not guarantee the movie’s success.

There’s also the difficulty of adapting Naruto onto the big screen. To date, there has been very few successful big-screen adaptations of Manga material to date, the majority existing in the Foreign market anyway. Oldboy and Death Note were critically acclaimed films that successfully adapted their manga material, but Speed Racer and Priest were likewise movies equally panned by its same audience. The American version of Oldboy suffered even worse than those movies were.

That’s not to say that a Naruto film can’t work, and it definitely has a lot of material to work with, but it’s at a difficult time of manga-to-film adaptations. It’s starting off in a struggling market. That’s not a good indication for any production, whether it be based off of a manga or not.

And finally, there’s Gracey. He’s got his visual work cut out for him for sure. He served as digital compositor film films such as 2005’s The Magician, 2003’s Ned Kelly and 1997’s Amy. He’s also slated to direct the 2016 film The Greatest Showman On Earth, starring Hugh Jackman, so he has directing experience under his belt. But as a filmmaker who is just now breaking into the directing profession, I’m scared for him and how well he can handle a property as complex and challenging as Naruto is. Stefen Fangmeier was the visual effects supervisor for films such as Terminator 2: Judgement Day, Jurassic Park, and Saving Private Ryan before he directed 2006’s Eragon. The film was almost immediately panned from both critics and readers of the novel, and it killed his directing career almost instantly. I’m worried Gracey might end up in the same boat as Fangmeier.

What do you guys think? Are you excited that a Naruto film is on its way, or do you think the production needs its own substitution jutsu? Comment below, let me know.

– David Dunn

SOURCE: Variety, ComicBook.com
Jul 27 2015
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Reviews

“PAPER TOWNS” Review (✫✫✫1/2)

Just a paper boy living in a paper town.

The frames we see in Paper Towns are the stuff of fantasies, the kind that we think about and dream of late at night in our bed while staring at the ceiling. It’s hard to look at this movie and not relate it to our own experiences in high school, in first love, in friendship, and in self-discovery. At one point, I was watching the movie and wondering if I was watching someone else’s story, or my own.

If we are watching someone else’s story, that someone is Quintin “Q” Jacobsen (Nat Wolff), a regular high school student with regular friends, regular parents, regular life, and regular post-graduation plans. Just about everything is regular to Q except for one thing: Margo Roth Spiegelman (Cara Delevingne), the girl on his block that he’s been in love with since they were kids.

Q and Margo are the epitome of opposites. Q is shy and introverted. Margo is confident and extroverted. Q likes to play it safe. Margo likes to take risks. Q likes to look ahead and plan for his next step. Margo thinks not knowing where you’ll end up is the most fun part of anything.

One day, Margo completely vanishes. Her parents, her friends, nobody knows where Margo may have gone. As time passes, however, Q discovers clues Margo left behind for him to discover. A piece of paper in his door. A page torn out of a map. Writing on an old gas station wall that reads “You will go to the paper towns, and you will never come back.” Now convinced that Margo wants him to find her, Q starts piecing all of the clues together to find out where she has gone to convince her to come home.

The second of John Green’s novels to be adapted to film (with the first being last year’s The Fault In Our Stars), Paper Towns is a truly unique and invigorating experience, refreshing in its comedy, in its drama, and in its truth. It reminds me so much of The Fault In Our Stars, and yet, it’s so different from it too.

I’ll start with the best thing from both movies: the characters. Green’s novels have such a unique way of making ordinary characters extraordinary, and that’s just as true with the movies as it is the books. Margo is a spur-of-the-moment, lively and rebellious teenager who serves as more or less an enigma of what adventures high school students fantasize about and aspire to. She’s almost too ecstatic to be believable as a character, and that’s exactly the point. As Q says it best in the movie, “It’s so silly, it can only be true.”

The moments where she takes Q on her midnight adventures are probably some of my favorite scenes in the movie. While Margo was pushing Q to get out of his comfort zone, I was reminded of a scene between the two leads from Martin Scorsese’s 2011 film Hugo.

Isabelle: We could get in trouble.

Hugo: That’s how you know it’s an adventure.

Every other supporting character is just as interesting and likeable as Margo is, however less mysterious. Q’s friends, Radar and Ben (Justice Smith and Austin Abrams), are the mischievous sort that talk about high school rumors and made up sex stories just like immature high school students do. Halston Sage portrays Margo’s best friend Lacey, and while she’s convincing and bubbly in the role, she’s a little too old to convincingly look like she’s still in high school. Most of the younger cast is ages 18 to 20. Sage is 22.

The one that most impresses me is Nat Wolff. Originally a supporting character in The Fault In Our Stars, here Wolff transitions front and center as the lead role in Paper Towns. His versatility as an actor is pitch-perfect here, portraying all of the joy, excitement, angst, ambition, and confusion a teenager has during his high school years. Actors in these roles tend to overplay them, either with an over exaggeration of joy or sadness. Not Wolff. Hearing him crack his voice or watching his eyes tear up gets more of a reaction out of me than the overabundance of tears and sobbing we get out of actors who overdo it in other movies. Wolff plays his role convincingly without overdoing it. He doesn’t miss a note.

Everything else in the movie is primed to near-perfection. The comedy is fresh and wholehearted without being on-the-nose or over-the-top. The drama is grounded and believable, and hits on issues that most teenagers experience on the verge of growing up and moving on to college. The only minor complaint I would have with the movie is that some of the plot elements seem so out there for teenagers under 18, but the movie addresses that near the end of the third act.

All in all, Paper Towns does what its supposed to and when its supposed to do it. It made me laugh abundantly and uncontrollably. It made me choke up and quiver. It made me intrigued and interested. And it made me eagerly happy and excited, not unlike the excitement these characters experience with each other throughout the film. I may have been too much of a romanticist while writing this review, but I’d like to think Green was one while he was writing the book. The movie delves into both the truths and fantasies of growing up. Just because not everything happened, doesn’t mean it’s any less real.

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Jul 21 2015
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The Scope

John Green visits Dallas for new movie

In the midst of the screams and cheers of excited fans, John Green signed as many autographs as he could when faced with an onslaught of books and movie posters.

The Indianapolis-based author behind novels like Looking For Alaska and The Fault In Our Stars recently came to Dallas to promote the recent film adaptation of his 2008 novel Paper Towns, which tells the story of a suburban teenager searching for his classmate and love interest when she goes missing. He came to the “Get Lost, Get Found” tour 4 p.m. Thursday at The Bomb Factory in Dallas and was accompanied by actors Nat Wolff, Halston Sage and indie band Saint Motel.

“Dude, I love Dallas,” Green said. “I love Dallas so much. Yes, to 4 p.m. on a blistering July afternoon. This is an amazing place.”

The event was hosted by YouTubers Allison Raskin and Gaby Dunn, who produce the channel ‘Just Between Us.’ Dunn said Green favorited a video where they were talking about “duck penises.” It wasn’t long before Green personally asked them to host the fan event.

“I had read The Fault in Our Stars, then I read Paper Towns when I heard they were making a movie about it,” Dunn said. “I think I was already following him and when he followed me back. I was like ‘What is happening?’”

Dunn wasn’t the only one to read book by John Green after hearing about the movie coming out. UTA sociology junior Skyler Vasquez did the same thing when she heard that The Fault In Our Stars was being adapted into a film in 2014.

“I read the book before the movie came out,” Vasquez said. “I immediately fell in love with John Green.”

She started reading Paper Towns when she heard it was being made into a film as well, Vasquez said.

”Paper Towns is a little hard to get into at first, but it’s a great story,” she said. “You just kind of got to hang on for the first few chapters and then it’ll pick up.”

One element that fans of Green praise about his writing is his style. Burleson high school student Alie Shipman described it as “interpretive”, going so far as to compare it to finding clues to solve a bigger mystery.

“It was a really good book,” Shipman said. “I like the style that he writes in. I’m kind of a bookworm.”

Vasquez said she likes how Green immerses the reader in his characters.

“John Green has a unique way of developing characters that are so different from one another,” Vasquez said. “It’s almost as if you can put yourself in that character’s place.”

Green’s novel was based on his own road trip experiences, and his reactions when he and his friends came across a real “paper town.”

55ad5c45d33b2.image“I really wanted it to be a movie about imagining other people complexly, and how difficult it is to understand what it’s really like to be someone else, and how difficult empathy really can be,” Green said. “I think Jake Schreier, the director of this movie, did an amazing job of bringing that to the screen.”

With Paper Towns being his second book to be adapted to the screen, Green said this is supposed to be a less sad movie than The Fault In Our Stars. Also, unlike his scene that they ended up cutting out of The Fault In Our Stars, he will have a cameo in Paper Towns.

“I have a cameo. It’s in the movie. Almost no one notices it, but it’s there,” Green said enthusiastically. “I know it’s there.”

With Paper Towns releasing on Friday, fans are more than excited for Green’s second big-screen adaptation.

“I just feel so incredibly lucky, not just to have them made, but to like them,” Green said. “I like both of the movies so much, and that’s very rare for authors. I’m really grateful.”

– David Dunn

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Jul 16 2015
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Reviews

“ANT-MAN” Review (✫✫)

Fear me! I control ants! 

Here’s the perfect example of expectation affecting outcome. Let’s be honest: who was expecting anything out of Ant-Man? I know I wasn’t. I went in expecting a complacent, by-the-books, predictable superhero thriller. I left after getting that exact same thing.

Okay, maybe I’m being a little rough. The movie does have its moments, and it did at times give me slight enjoyment and chuckles. But how can individual moments replace an entire movie? If you compare Ant-Man to its other giant-sized movie counterparts (The Avengers, Iron Man, Captain America: The Winter Soldier), you will always arrive to the same word to describe it: smaller.

Taking place after the events of The Avengers: Age of Ultron, Ant-Man introduces Hank Pym (Michael Douglas), a genius scientist that rivals the intellect of Iron Man’s father Howard Stark (John Slattery). After realizing that the government was seeking his Pym particles, which allows him to turn into Ant-Man, to be weaponized, Pym goes into retirement, hoping to protect his particles from the world so that they would never be used for nefarious purposes.

Enter Daniel Cross (Corey Stoll), Pym’s ex prodigy. In modern day, Cross re-created Pym’s particles in the form of Yellowjacket, a suit similarly designed to Ant-Man and outfitted with the same capabilities. Desperate to get the suit and to further protect his invention, Pym enlists the only individual who can help take up the Ant-Man mantle: Scott Lang (Paul Rudd), a notorious thief who has a knack for getting into places he doesn’t belong, and a daughter he’d do anything to see again after separating from her mother.

It’s true, most probably didn’t think much about a superhero named Ant-man when this project was originally announced. But to be fair, this film does have some merit, despite its low expectations. The best thing I can say about Ant-Man is this: its fun. Meagerly fun, yes, but it still counts.

Honestly though, that doesn’t surprise me much. The film was originally written and was supposed to be directed by Edgar Wright, who is most known for his comedic action films Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz, The World’s End, and Scott Pilgrim vs. the World. If you’ve seen any of those films, you know that he’s a clever and well-versed filmmaker who knows how to balance action and comedy with drama. If I were a studio head, I would have taken one look at his filmography, thrown all of my money at him, and shouted “Take it! Take it all! Take it and make more!”

So what happened? Simply put, Marvel happened. After a few creative disagreements between himself and Marvel, Wright left and Peyton Reed was hired in his place. Reed directed The Break Up and Yes Man before helming Ant-Man. Yeesh.

Luckily, Ant-Man survived it’s lop-sided pre-production into release. Well, maybe “survived” isn’t an appropriate word. Dragged by its insect legs is more accurate.

The biggest complaint about Ant-Man is that it’s inconsistent. Moments of heartfelt drama collide with out-of-place comedy. Comedy is bogged down by moments of forced emotion. The only thing that is consistent in the film is its action, which is surprisingly innovative to its premise.

For instance: in the first scene where Scott shrinks as Ant-Man, he falls into a bathtub. Who would have thought falling in between droplets of water and cracks in the floor would be so exciting and interesting? The details we see when Scott shrinks are extraordinarily eye-popping, immersing us in this whole new world we didn’t see before in regular proportion. Seeing Scott traverse into ant hills that turn big when he shrinks, communicating with insects his size when he’s small, and finding new locations inside smaller ones are among some of the fantasies we see when he’s Ant-Man. Seeing him fight as Ant-Man is the most fun. Who knew that a Thomas the Train set could be so dangerous to two miniature super-beings?

Other than the visuals though, the movie is sub-standard. It’s cookie-cutter in about every sense of the word. The comedy, the drama, and the acting is all forced for effect, and in the process, it has none. For Pete’s sake, even the movie’s villain is so bland. Who cares about some bratty little business executive who steals a powered suit for money, fame, and power? That was Obadiah Stane in 2007’s Iron Man, and he was a much more compelling villain than this standard archetype of an antagonist.

It’s true, this film didn’t have much to go on when originally announced, but the idea doesn’t count as much as the execution. People doubted Guardians of the Galaxy when that came out, and people reversed their opinions and said it was greater than The Avengers after they saw the film. I believe those same people will watch Ant-Man with no reaction as he flies in the air and goes “splat” across their window pane.

Footnote: If you do decide to watch Ant-Man, do not watch it in 3D. It has some of the worst particle effects I’ve ever seen in a 3D conversion, and I had to lift my glasses every five minutes to see how much brighter the film was without the glasses. I didn’t know that Ant-Man was supposed to be such a dark picture.

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Jul 14 2015
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Reviews

“KINGSMAN: THE SECRET SERVICE” Review (✫✫)

The name’s Eggsy. Agent Eggsy. 

For any of you who are planning on going into the moviemaking business, always keep one thing in mind: your audience. While most of them might be fairly desensitized and will enjoy senseless amounts of gore and violence, one or two of your audience members might not enjoy it as much, and indeed, might be so revolted by it that it affects their view of the whole picture. Does it really ruin all of the fun for everyone if you just tone down the blood and gore one or two notches? Just a few scenes can ruin a whole movie for your viewer, just like it did with me.

I know, I know, the movie probably wasn’t made for me since I’m being Mr. poopy pants by saying “ew” to blood. Can you blame me though? The MPAA rated Kingsman: The Secret Service R for “sequences of strong violence, language and some sexual content.” They didn’t indicate how disturbing it was, or even how frequent and over-the-top it was either. Adding the word “intense” to any of the film’s rating descriptors would not have been inaccurate.

The plot is based on a Mark Millar comic series The Secret Service. A young man named Gary “Eggsy” Unwin (Taron Egerton) is a troublemaking rebel who steals cars and gets into fights when his mother’s jerk of a boyfriend isn’t beating him up. His many delinquencies land him in jail, where he is told he’s going to spend the next 18 years of his life.

Yes, I know his name is Eggsy. Go ahead and laugh. I’ll give you a minute.

Eventually, he is freed by Harry Hart (Colin Firth), a tailor who has a thing for good manners and tall pints. What Eggsy doesn’t know is that Hart isn’t really a tailor at all: he’s a british spy, working for a secret service called “The Kingsman”, the same service Eggsy’s father worked with before he died saving Harry’s life. Now feeling a need to repay Eggsy’s father, Harry gives Eggsy a chance to become a Kingsman himself: to change his destiny and become the “gentleman” his father always wanted him to be.

The film is written and directed by Matthew Vaughn. If you know anything about Vaughn, its that his films have a very strong reception to his core audience, which I guess is… who, exactly? Masochists? His films have received an equal amount of both support and controversy in the past, including among them Kick-Ass and X-men: First Class. I myself am not a fan of him. Kick-Ass was a morally degenerate and violent escapade even worse than this movie, including horrific scenes of torture and child violence. First Class on the whole wasn’t controversial as it was incoherent, ignoring the rest of the series canon like it was a reboot instead of the self-purported prequel it was selling itself as.

But I don’t look at the director as much as I look at the film itself. What was this movie trying to be? An action-comedy. Did it succeed in that? On the whole, yes. Kingsman: The Secret Service is a humorous and stylish escapade with cartoonish violence and action equivalent to that of a Mortal Kombat video game. It had two goals here: being funny and exciting. It fulfilled both.

There was a lot I liked here with Kingsman. First off, the film was casted well. Egerton’s spunky rebellious attitude clashes well with Firth’s firm sense of structure and order, and makes for some good scenes with strong comedic dialogue in them. Mark Strong is a solid supporting character here, serving here as an adept tech assistant instead of the usual villainous roles that he does in his movies. Samuel L. Jackson was perhaps the funniest as the film’s main antagonist. In a career where Jackson spitballs lines of dialogue like bullets in films like Jungle Fever, Pulp Fiction and The Avengers, it’s both unexpected and refreshing to see him here talking with a lisp and with a sour distaste for blood. What kind of baddie doesn’t like to look at blood and give lengthy villainous monologues?

The action, while preposterous, is both stylish and exciting. Characters punch, stab, flip, grab, kick, and shoot each other in skillfully choreographed positions and movements, taking each other out in uniquely different styles that I haven’t seen before. Imagine a cross between the usual James Bond martial-arts fighting with the gunplay you’d see in a Die Hard movie. That’s the type of combat you see in Kingsman: The Secret Service, and its a rare visual treat that got me really engaged into some of the movie’s greater fighting sequences.

All in all, I was really enjoying Kingsman: The Secret Service until it got into the third act. Then it took a nosedive straight into the pavement.

I’ll try as hard as I can to describe this without giving many spoilers. In one scene, a church congregation starts slaughtering each other after the pastor delivers an incredibly racist and prejudiced sermon that I think is supposed to resemble the ramblings of Fred Phelps from the Westboro Baptist Church. This is one of the more violent and disturbing sequences in the movie, with neck snapping and people stabbings and body contortions into convoluted shapes that I didn’t even think was possible for a dead human being. The scene, while stylish and entertaining, was also equally disturbing and out of place. I laughed out loud, but I didn’t know if it was out of enjoyment or shock.

Another scene involved a mother stabbing a door in a Jack Torrance-Shining style, trying to kill her one-year-old crying daughter. That one was too much for me. I don’t like seeing child violence or distress in movies. Unless you’re having it in there to make a point about parentage or childhood trauma, scenes like that aren’t ever necessary to a movie.

Overall, we have a really cohesive film that on the whole works really well. What backfired was simply one or two scenes that severely clashed with the film’s overall vision, moments that took me out of the fun I was having to make me insanely sickened and disgusted at what was going on the screen.

The last out-of-place scene was one where a woman was asking Eggsy for anal sex. I think that’s a metaphor for something.

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Jul 11 2015
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Reviews

“JURASSIC WORLD” Review (✫1/2)

Never trust a velociraptor. 

If there is any reason you need convincing as to why some movie franchises need to stay extinct, let Jurassic World be your most recent example. How to I start with this? Well, let me start with a positive: Joe Johnston isn’t directing. Thank God, because I couldn’t stomach another Jurassic Park III. Maybe I already have.

The movie takes place 20 years after the events of Jurassic Park, which is just as well because it literally is more than 20 years after the original was released. The new plot re-writes the history so that The Lost World and Jurassic Park III never took place. Not a change I will be missing since those movies contributed as little to the series as World does.

The film’s cast of characters includes a dinosaur whisperer named Owen Grady (Chris Pratt), who controls his own small battalion of velociraptors ready at a moment’s notice. Yes, you read that right. A velociraptor battalion. You get used to such absurdities as the movie goes on. You have Claire Dearing (Bryce Dallas Howard), the park manager of the newly-designed Jurassic World. Then you have Zach and Gray Mitchell (Ty Simpkins and Nick Robinson), two brothers who go to Jurassic World for a small vacation away from their parents. Oh yeah, and Claire is their aunt. You can tell their parents are really responsible by sending their kids away to an exotic park filled with man-eating beasts and reptiles with their ditzy, airhead of an estranged aunt to take care of them.

Anyhow, the upgraded, new-and-improved Jurassic World is a major step forward from Jurassic Park, the failed first attempt at a dinosaur park thanks to the hands of John Hammond. But no worries! Jurassic World is the perfected design of Jurassic Park, and nothing can possibly go wrong!

…right? RIGHT?!

Wrong. They do the smartest thing they can do and create a new carnivorous dinosaur called the Indominus that is more powerful than the T-Rex, Spinosaurus and a pack of Velociraptors combined. Hooray for dinosaur science!

As soon as the film opens up, you realize how many stupid characters are packed into the film to create the biggest idiot plot you’ve seen since Idiocracy. Idiot # 1: Whoever decided to create this park after the original one ended so disastrously. Idiot # 2: The mad scientists who decided to create a new carnivorous dinosaur, splicing together the DNA of nature’s most dangerous dinosaurs. Idiot # 3: Bryce Dallas Howard’s character, for deciding to run in high heels the entire movie. Idiot # 4: The park official who thought the dinosaurs could be reused as weapons for tactical takeover. I’m sure he was still wondering what went wrong as one was chewing off his head (Hint: They’re hungry, you moron). Idiot # 5: Mr. DNA, because curse that Clippit wannabe. Idiot # 6: Anyone who thought it was a good idea to pay money to go to this park after knowing what happened at the old one.

It’s true, I’m not a fan of this movie’s conception to begin with. The premise itself has so many logical flaws to begin with, its hard to get into the story. But I’ve been faced with worse cases before and have been happily proven wrong. I had doubts before I went into the theaters to see 22 Jump Street and Guardians of the Galaxy, and those ended up being some of the most fun movies of 2014. If done well, a movie can suspend disbeliefs and be what a summer moviegoing experience is supposed to be: entertaining.

The problem with Jurassic World is that it undermines its own intelligence, and the entertainment value doesn’t pay off despite it. The script starts off with its flaws of logic in the outset and never addresses them in the film, its characters as oblivious to their own faulty thinking as badly as the screenwriters are. The movie continues with an onslaught of cliches and inaccuracies, some of which I rolled my eyes hard at and wondering if I was watching a Roland Emmerich action picture. Some of the worst blows come in the form of dialogue that actors somehow manage to deliver with straight faces (i.e. Lines like “I was with the Navy, not the Navajo” or “Wait until I tell my mom!”). Don’t even ask me how many times characters told each other to run.

Probably the worst offense comes with the casting. I’m not denying that these are talented actors. From big roles to small ones, each of these cast members have been in roles where they had a strong presence on screen. Now, their presence includes running away from dinosaurs and looking good in sweaty clothes. Simpkins was cute and likable in movies like The Next Three Days and Iron Man 3. Now, he’s an OCD dinosaur nerd who recites species like he’s a dictionary. Robinson was solid in in the coming-of-age drama The Kings Of Summer. Here, he’s in the cliche Gothic-teen phase like those characters you’d see from “Degrassi.” Howard’s resume needs no explanation. Her acting ability is worth more than the pretty-faced ditz role she’s forced into this movie. And Pratt? Ugh. Pratt is the worst. After making as strong a debut as he did in Guardians of The Galaxy, director Colin Trevorrow did the worse thing you possibly could do to Pratt in this movie: he made him boring.

Again, the visuals are amazing. Whoop-de-do. The more I offer the visual effects and the fight sequences as the movie’s strongest points, the more irritated I get at knowing I’m writing the same criticism over, and over, and over, and over again. Yes, the visuals are amazing, but are they good enough to substantiate the movie’s flaws? The original Jurassic Park revolutionized computer imaging years ago when you saw the life-sized dinosaur for the first time in 1993. What big achievement can Jurassic World boast about? Continuing the trend that Jurassic Park started. That’s it.

Great visual effects mean nothing if a plot is not strong enough to stand on its own two legs. Is one character’s solution to outrunning a giant dinosaur seriously to release a bigger, scarier dinosaur? What was she going to do when either dinosaur was finished? And on that note, is she seriously running and doing all of this leg work in high heels???

I’m seeming pretty harsh with this movie. I know it, and I’m sticking by it. The more I thought about my experience with this movie, the more irritated I get at the movie’s ignorances of itself and its audience. This movie’s premise was not the worst thing in the world. Guardians of the Galaxy had an even more preposterous idea to its story with talking trees and raccoons, and it pulled it off with humor and with heart. This movie copied what Jurassic Park did first and better, and it’s artificial efforts show. It needed to understand how prehistoric sequels are nowadays, and how badly it needed to evolve from it.

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Jul 07 2015
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Han Solo Is Blasting Into Theaters

The next Star Wars solo film has just gotten more awesome. And it’s also about a Solo, incidentally.

The second part of the upcoming Star Wars anthology series was announced as a prequel to Han Solo’s story before the events of A New Hope. That film is going to be helmed by 21 Jump Street and The Lego Movie filmmakers Phil Lord and Chris Miller. With the screenplay written by Lawrence Kasdan and his son Jon, the story focuses on a young Han Solo and how he rose to become the thief, smuggler, and gun for hire that eventually got involved in the rebel crusade with the likes of Luke Skywalker and Princess Lea.

“This is a dream come true for us,” Lord and Miller said in a press release. “And not the kind of dream where you’re late for work and all your clothes are made of pudding, but the kind of dream where you get to make a film with some of the greatest characters ever, in a film franchise you’ve loved since before you can remember having dreams at all.”

I’m very excited at hearing that these two are helming a Han Solo prequel. The director’s have received critical acclaim from the 21 Jump Street series, but The Lego Movie was just as, if not more, funny, action-packed, and heartfelt as the 21 Jump Street films are. Han Solo is one of the most charismatic and smirking characters out of all of Star Wars fandom. To hear that his story is being told from Lord and Miller’s creative mind is very exciting.

What do you guys think? Are you as excited as I am that Han Solo’s story is being handled by this comedic couple? Or do you think someone else is needed with an attitude as rebellious as the pilot’s himself is?  Comment below, let me know.

– David Dunn

SOURCE: Star Wars.com, The Hollywood Reporter

 

Jul 06 2015
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Reviews

“INSIDE OUT” Review (✫✫✫✫)

A lot going on inside Riley’s head.

Pixar movies have a way of transcending fantasy and translating it into a form of reality. Does that make any sense? Of course it does, because you’ve seen many of Pixar’s masterpieces before. Up’s fantasy is about a man building a floating house about balloons, but the reality it’s portraying is an elder man dealing with personal loss and finding happiness in unexpected places. WALL-E’s fantasy is about a clumsy dumpster robot, but its reality is about discovering humanity and protecting our home and history. And Toy Story. Ooff. That’s a fantasy about one boy’s childhood with his toys and how they’ve impacted him into his adulthood. That is also its reality.

Here we have another colorful Pixar masterpiece that uses reality as its springboard for creativity and fantasy, using a human being as a setting, and her emotions as its characters. The human is Riley Anderson (Kaitlyn Dias), an 11-year-old girl who just recently moved from Minnesota to San Francisco. Her emotions are Joy (Amy Poehler), Sadness (Phyllis Smith), Fear (Bill Hader), Disgust (Mindy Kaling), and Anger (Lewis Black), and their memories with her make up the core of Riley’s personality and how she reacts in different situations. After the move-in, Riley gets all shaken up from all of the new adjustments she has to get used to, from being the new kid at school, to moving in to a home smaller than her old one. It’s up to her vibrant and unique emotions to try and keep Riley together and make her new life a happy, sad, fearful, disgusted, and angry one.

Written and directed by Pete Docter, who also helmed Pixar’s Monsters Inc. and Up, Inside Out is a clever, original animated feature that uses the human psyche as its playground. The best thing about the movie is seeing how creative it is in re-creating the human brain for a child’s mind, and seeing children react to all of the colorful adventures going on in this infinite cranial wonderland.

The first thing you notice with the film is its animation: vibrant colors and character models reach out to you in vivid details, even more so without the dimmed effects of 3D. Memories come in the form of small bowling ball spheres, colored after the fashion of each of Riley’s emotions. Different parts of her life are modeled into vast theme-park-like islands, from Family Land all the way to Goofball Island. Each island is also jam-packed with its own sleek features and gadgets that make you feel like you’re in the wonderful landscape of Disney land. Be honest: you would love to ride the literal “Train of thought” if it existed, wouldn’t you?

The film’s creative landscape, though, is to be expected. We’ve seen dozens of vast, colorful settings from many of Pixar’s films before. Andy’s room in Toy Story. Paradise Falls in Up. The AXIOM in WALL-E. You can probably name one setting that struck your eye in each movie, from the world of self-aware automobiles in Cars to the anthill in A Bug’s Life. Pixar has never failed in creativity, and I doubt anyone expects them to start failing now.

What I’m most impressed with is how the film handles its vastly ambitious premise, even with the film’s somewhat purported flaws. For instance, in Riley’s mind, a lot of childish, silly things go on that might make adults go on “offline” mode while the kids laugh at the overt goofiness going on the screen, like double rainbows and processed boyfriend machines. The characters are mostly one-dimensional, and for a film that has five emotions in it, the movie primarily focuses on only two of them: Joy and Sadness.

In any other movie, these quote-unquote “flaws” would make the film a weaker experience for me. It didn’t here. Why? The film’s premise, setting, and execution constitutes a need for each of these elements, making them contributors to the plot instead of distractions degrading from the experience. I would knock the film for being really silly and goofy at times, but it’s taking place in a kid’s mind. What else would be in the ecstatic and excited mind of a child? Doom, gloom, and misery? The characters are mostly one-dimensional and go through little change in the motion picture, but isn’t that kind of expected? I mean, what emotions do you think characters named Joy, Sadness, Fear, Disgust, and Anger are going to feel? Woe, Delight, Calm, Desire, and Peace? That would break their characters, and detract from the personalities and make them who they are. Finally, there’s the greater focus of using Joy and Sadness as the film’s key players instead of the others. There’s a specific reason for doing this. It’s because those are the core emotions any human being is going to experience: positive and negative.

In the film, Joy and Sadness conflict with each other with their contrasting personalities, each one trying to help Riley in the best ways that they can. Joy wants everything to be happy and optimistic, and for Riley to feel the enjoyment out of every situation. Sadness focuses on the reality of each situation and on the raw reactions one may feel from those that are less than happy. While both emotions conflict with each other in the ways they want to help Riley, they are ultimately the most essential for her. They allow her to express her emotions in their purest forms: in either pure Joy, or pure Sadness.

This is the ultimate meaning of the film, in that there are different things that make up each human being. Some has more anger in their bodies than others. Some may be filled with more Fear than others as well. But like the animated, wacky emotions in Riley’s curious little head, we’re all unique to each other and in the ways that we handle life’s problems. It’s how a baby will react differently to a traffic jam in how a taxi driver would. It’s how a fully-grown man will react differently to broccoli-covered pizza than a toddler would. It’s how a young, maturing boy will react differently to meeting a girl for the first time, and visa-versa.

As human beings, we are all made up of different emotions and personalities, but being different doesn’t mean being bad. Sometimes we need to experience the rawness of certain emotions for certain situations, and that’s not a bad thing. Sometimes, we need the help of Joy, Sadness, Fear, Disgust, and Anger to get through life. How we express those emotions is what makes us who we are, and we end up being human beings as unique and diverse as Riley’s wonderful emotions are because of them.

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