There are few if any characters that have had as much of an impact in cinematic history as 007 himself, James Bond.  From the very moment that Sean Connery ordered his first vodka martini as the secret agent in Dr. No (1962), the entire world knew they had found a new cinematic icon.  A large part of it had to do with the charisma of Connery, of course, but as we’ve seen over the years, Ian Fleming’s Bond can live far beyond just one single actor.  George Lazenby, Roger Moore, Timothy Dalton, and Pierce Brosnon have all donned Bond’s neatly tailored threads over the years, sometimes in spectacular fashion and at other times in some rather mediocre ways.  For a long running series like James Bond’s, it’s sometimes difficult to keep up the high quality from film to film, which has kept the Bond franchise consistently inconsistent.  Each new actor does bring in fresh blood, but rarely do all of their movies become all time classics.  Going over every Bond film, you can pick out at least one from each star that’s a classic, and for some of the more prolific like Connery and Moore, they may have two or more classics among them.  George Lazenby lucked out with having his one and only outing as the character being the great and underrated On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969).  Basically, what I’ve seen from  the Bond franchise is a very roller coaster like flow to it’s level of quality and that the longer an actor commits to the role, the more they leave themselves open to having a shakier record as the super spy.

Which leads me to where the series is at now, as we reach the latter part and possible end of the Daniel Craig era.  Daniel Craig’s turn as Bond has been one of the most praised across the board, and it’s easy to see why.  The Bond franchise had declined heavily towards the end of Pierce Brosnan’s reign.  Brosnan started off strong with the classic Goldeneye (1995), but his three follow-ups got progressively worse, ending with the laughable Die Another Day (2002), the movie where Bond surfs on a tsunami and drives an invisible car.  When it came time to choose a new actor for the role, parent company EON Productions wanted someone who could bring the series back to it’s roots, and the perfect man for the job ended up being Daniel Craig.  Though not a household name at the time, Craig has since left his mark on the character, making Bond tougher and grittier, while at the same time not betraying the suave roots of Fleming’s original.  Craig became the Bond of the 21st century and modernized him in a way that greatly appealed to audiences.  Since being cast, Craig has appeared in four films total (contracted for five) and he holds the distinction of having one of the best batting averages of all the Bond actors.  Of his movies, you can definitely consider two of them all time classics, his debut Casino Royale (2006) and the record breaking Skyfall (2012).  Quantum of Solace (2008), while not bad by any means, does fall short of the other two, showing that even Craig is not immune to a dip in quality during his time.  And after Skyfall, which could arguably be the best Bond movie ever made, it’s put a lot of pressure on what follows it after.  So, this week, we finally see how Daniel Craig’s James Bond fares in his fourth outing; the hotly anticipated Spectre (2015).

The interesting thing about Daniel Craig’s Bond movies is that unlike all the others, they share the same story arc, each one connected to the other.  Spectre picks up right where Skyfall left off, with James following a lead left to him by his recently deceased former boss M (Judi Dench), which leads him to take on rogue missions much to the chagrin of the new M in charge (Ralph Fiennes).  With the assistance of hi-tech quartermaster Q (Ben Whishaw) and reliable desk operative Moneypenny (Naomie Harris), Bond is able to go undercover and infiltrate a shadow organization that he believes is responsible for terrorist attacks all over the world, called simply SPECTRE.  Once he makes it inside, he soon learns that one man is in charge of the whole operation going by the name Franz Oberhauser (Christoph Waltz), and that he is more aware of Bond’s presence than he realized.  After escaping in a chase through the streets of Rome, pursued by Oberhauser’s henchman Hinx (Dave Bautista), Bond seeks out an old enemy, Mr. White (Jesper Christensen), who can give him more information about SPECTRE, which the old man does with the promise from James that he will protect White’s daughter Madeleine Swann (Lea Seydoux).  All the while this is happening, M, Q, and Moneypenny are having to deal with the shutdown of the 00 program in favor of a computer driven surveillance system developed by a tech wizard code-named C (Andrew Scott), leaving Bond all on his own.

Spectre does something unique in the Bond franchise in that it ties up all the loose threads of each previous film, even the more standalone Skyfall.  As a result, this movie has an interesting sense of closure for Daniel Craig’s version of the character, which would be fitting if this is indeed his final outing.  But, the question is, does this movie live up to what has come before and become a third classic for the actor; or does it disappoint and only prove that it’s time for a change.  Well, truth be told, when it comes to making all time great Bond movies, it seems you only live twice.  But, that’s not a sign that this movie is bad.  Spectre really is everything a Bond movie should be.  It’s got great action set pieces, including a spectacular opening in Mexico City that I would consider one of the best in the series, and a great fight sequence between Craig and Bautista on a train.  It’s also got the series’ trademark sense of humor that helps to keep the movie from ever becoming too heavy and self-important.  Really, any other time this would be considered an all time great in the series, and as a standalone film, it’s easy to recommend to everyone.  The unfortunate thing for it is that it’s coming right off the the heels of Skyfall, which is not only a franchise best, but arguably one of the best spy thrillers ever made.  Because Skyfall is so close in my memory, it only made me think of what this film was missing, which might be a little unfair of me, but I would be lying at the same time if I said that I didn’t have a nagging couple issues with this movie either.

I’d say that my biggest fault with the film is that it suffers from a very underwhelming third act.  Much of the film’s best scenes play out early on and the movie leads up to a very satisfying confrontation with Bond and the villain, including some revelations that will please die hard fans of the franchise as well as the Fleming novels.  Unfortunately, the film goes on for another twenty minutes or so after it should’ve ended, with a pointless game of cat and mouse through the streets of London, adding nothing more to the movie other than another action sequence.  Skyfall on the other hand built up to it’s climax in a perfect way, giving it the weight and tension that it needed.  That’s what’s missing here.  Spectre also suffers from periodic lulls in pacing.  While the movie does come alive whenever there is an action sequence, it would slow down thereafter and lose my interest in some of the more dialogue heavy sequences.  Not that the’re bad scenes, but I would at times start to loose attention to what was going on.  And at 2 1/2 hours, Spectre is the longest Bond movie to date, which makes these down moments all the more problematic.  But at the same time, the movie doesn’t fully suffer for it.  There is still a great deal to enjoy about this movie.  It may be flawed, but at the same time, you can say that about 80% of all the Bond films.  Only a select handful have ever achieved masterpiece status.  I would put Spectre on the high end of the “almost masterpieces”, which would include movies like Tomorrow Never Dies (1997), Octopussy (1983), Live and Let Die (1973), and From Russia With Love (1963).

What I did love, however, was James Bond himself in this film.  Daniel Craig once again proves why he is one of the greatest actors to ever play the role.  Only Connery could be considered better, given that he originated the character, and even that might be up for debate at some point.  Craig has never been letdown in this series, even with the story faults here in Spectre and more so in Quantum of Solace.  He’s believably tough whenever he gets into a fight, but also dashing enough to be charmingly suave.  He also nails the sense of humor of the character perfectly as well.  There’s a hilarious moment when Bond is staying in a seedy hotel in Morocco and he’s awoken to a mouse crawling across the floor in front of him.  In a great bit of subtle humor, Bond quietly pulls out his gun, points it at the mouse, and jokingly starts to interrogate it.  It’s one of the best character moments in the movie and it helped to make up for some of the movie’s other shortcomings.  In addition, Christoph Waltz is ideal casting as the villain, and it makes perfect sense that he was cast once we learn more about him towards the end.  I only wish that the movie had utilized more screen time for Waltz, because he doesn’t become a factor in the story until very late.  But, once he’s present, he doesn’t waste anytime leaving an impact, which is exactly why you get an actor of his quality on board for something like this.  I also liked the fact that Team Bond is more involved in this story.  Q and Moneypenny are not wasted on the sidelines and are given much more to do in this movie than in most of the previous Bond films, which is refreshing.  Even the new M helps out more, getting in a few well deserved fight scenes of his own.  Spectre is definitely bolstered by it’s capable cast, and I’m happy to see that no role was wasted overall.

The movie also benefits from well constructed set pieces and edge of your seat action scenes.  From what I’ve read, this is the most expensive Bond movie made to date, and you can see every penny put to use on screen.  The eye-opening Mexico City prologue is indeed one of the standouts and you can tell that director Sam Mendes wanted to set the movie’s bombastic tone in a big way.   The scale is perfectly conveyed immediately, especially given the nearly five minute tracking shot they used to open the movie.  I’d say that the only thing that’s missing is the beautiful, painterly styled cinematography from Roger Deakins that we saw in Skyfall.  Here the cinematography was done instead by Interstellar (2014) photographer Hoyte Van Hoytema, who goes for a grittier, more realistic style.  But, that helps to give this movie it’s own unique visual imprint to set it apart, so it’s not a negative by any means.  I also like the fact that this movie doesn’t overdo it with the visual effects.  That’s what plagued many of the later Brosnon Bonds, which overused CGI to the point where Die Another Day felt like a cartoon at times.  Here, the CGI supports the action rather than overwhelms it, which is what all the Craig Bonds have done exceptionally well.  Though they have the capabilities now to have James Bond do anything possible on the big screen, it’s a good sign that the filmmakers are restraining themselves to keep their super spy earthbound.  And this movie does an overall great job of retaining the tried and true feel of a Bond movie.  The famous title sequences are brilliant works of pop art in their own right and this one adds yet another stunning entry, although the title song by Sam Smith does unfortunately sound like a karaoke version of a Bond theme, and doesn’t quite reach the heights of Adele’s Oscar-winning ballad from Skyfall.

Overall, it’s hard to be truly fair to a movie like Spectre.  On it’s own, it is a very acceptable and downright enjoyable action thriller.  Unfortunately, the movie must also carry the weight of the franchise that it represents, made even more complicated by the fact that it’s following in the footsteps of a masterpiece.  But, at the same time, I do have to point out the flaws that are inherent, which do affect the overall quality of the movie.  It was a smart move on EON Production’s part to retain the creative team from Skyfall, which included director Mendes and screenwriter John Logan.  Unfortunately, success is a hard thing to repeat, so I do have to give them credit for doing as well as they did.  If only they had stuck the landing in the third act.  From what I’ve heard, this was one of the more troublesome productions for the series, leading star Daniel Craig to want to call it quits afterwards.  He still has one more film on his contract, but it remains to be seen if they decide to part ways and move on despite this.  The ending of this movie opens the door for both possibilities; it brings closure to Bond’s arc throughout all the Daniel Craig films, but at the same time, it also leaves room for further adventures.  Only time will tell which avenue they choose.  Regardless, as the end credits state, Bond will return and the franchise will continue to go on.  If this is the end for Daniel Craig as 007, then it’s a fine farewell.  He’s had one of the best runs ever as the character and though Casino Royale and Skyfall rank as solid 9’s, Spectre comes in as a respectable 8, with Quantum of Solace falling down to a 7.  It’s an almost classic that will certainly be worth watching no matter what.  And that’s all you need in the end from Bond, James Bond.

Rating: 8/10

The Halloween season always has room reserved for a horror entry or two.  And usually the best kinds of horror films are given the spotlight at this time.  When you’re a bad horror movie, you usually get shipped off to the beginning of January, where all the worst films go to be forgotten.  But, when you’re a high-quality horror film, a late October release is all the more timely.  Horror fans prefer to be shocked out of their wits and have their tolerances for gore challenged, because it’s a part of the entertainment.  It’s much more of a communal audience experience watching a horror film in a theater than any other type of genre, because the entertainment comes from our shared reactions.  Now, typically, horror films are low rent productions that make due with their limitations and will oftentimes be tongue-in-cheek experiences, depending on the execution.  But, there are also movies that fall into the category of prestige horror films, where the budgets and production values are increased significantly and the end result can be seen as artful in the film community, without betraying the rules of the genre.  A prestige horror film can sometimes come from a magnificently executed and high value production of a story with horror elements, like The Silence of the Lambs (1991) and The Exorcist (1973) or from a highly artistic rendering of the genre tropes through an acclaimed director’s vision, like Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining (1980).  This Halloween season offers us a new horror film of this second type from one of Hollywood’s most unique visionaries.

Mexican born filmmaker Guillermo del Toro has been something of renaissance man in Hollywood in terms of trying different genres, but always with his own unique vision.  He has taken on Science Fiction (2013’s Pacific Rim), Superheros (2004’s Hellboy and it’s 2008 sequel), as well as Fantasy and War Drama (2006’s Pan’s Labyrinth).  But, perhaps his favorite genre to tackle above all the others is horror, and in particular, ghost stories.  This was evident in his earlier films like Cronos (1993) and The Devil’s Backbone (2001), both of which centered around themes of death and the supernatural.  In fact, all of del Toro’s movies have a little bit of the macabre to them, including something as rollicking as Pacific Rim.  It’s very clear from watching any of his films that the man loves horror and his work often reflects that same love.  At the same time, he’s also a filmmaker who knows when to have a little fun while working within the confines of a genre and his movies are often purposefully over the top, which gives them an extra level of entertainment.  While he isn’t consistently sticking with a particular genre, his movies still almost always have a sense of character to them, which has made him a highly regarded director.  This year, he returns to his roots and has crafted another ghost based horror film called Crimson Peak.  It’s another stylish production from the visually driven filmmaker, but here for the first time, he is working within a Victorian Gothic setting.  It’s a style that’s well suited for a prestigious horror movie, but through the eyes of Guillermo del Toro, it becomes something even more incredible.

The story, which was co-written by Guillermo del Toro himself, follows the supernatural journey of Edith Cushing (played by Mia Wasikowska), an aspiring writer and only child of a New York based mining tycoon (Jim Beaver).  Since she was a little girl, she has been haunted by the ghost of her departed mother who periodically returns to tell her daughter to “beware of Crimson Peak.”  As an adult, she crosses paths with an English playboy named Thomas Sharpe (Tom Hiddleston) who seeks financial assistance with a mining venture that he wants to exploit on his home estate.  Edith is charmed by the stranger, but her father disapproves of the man and Edith’s childhood friend Dr. Alan McMichael (Charlie Hunnam) has his suspicions of him as well.  Edith nevertheless pursues a courtship with Thomas and agrees to marry him after she tragically loses her father in a sudden “accident.”  After the wedding, Thomas and Edith return to England where they begin married life in a decrepit old mansion called Allerdale Hall, which sits atop Thomas’ mine and is slowly sinking into the red clay beneath it.  The couple try to make due with the inconveniences of the house, but Edith feels unease under the watchful eye of Thomas’ overbearing sister Lucille (Jessica Chastain), who becomes more menacing the longer Edith is there.  Not only that, but Edith is visited by ghosts who haunt the house, each appearing more grotesque than the last.  Though frightened by them at first, Edith soon discovers that the ghosts are trying to deliver her a message, one which becomes more clear once she learns that the red clay that Thomas is digging up has given the hilltop she lives on another nickname by the local village folk who live near it; Crimson Peak.

Overall, it’s a very straight forward ghost story, which serves del Toro’s film well.  Like most of his other movies, it’s not about the intricacy of the plot, but the way it’s presented.  Guillermo del Toro works within the genre confines of horror, sometimes even embracing it’s cliches, all with the purpose of giving it his own spin.  Del Toro very much likes to make his movies work as examples of the genre, and not as parodies of it.  I can honestly see Crimson Peak standing confidently alongside the classic Hammer horror movies of the 60’s and 70’s, which themselves were purposely over-the-top.  Guillermo also milks the Victorian aesthetic and tone very well here, making the atmosphere of the film feel even more genuine.  While not particularly original, I did enjoy what this movie was trying to be and I felt that it overall worked as a genre flick.  Is it the scariest movie ever made?  No, but the atmosphere that del Toro builds up is enough to satisfy die hard horror fans.  There are some especially creepy moments in the movie, particularly it goes silent for some moments.  For the most part, I felt that the movie was at it’s strongest when it just let the atmosphere of the scene speak for itself, with the moody lighting and the eerily tuned sound design taking over.  The story is not particularly deep; you already know where the plot is going long before it gets there.  But at the same time, I believe that’s del Toro’s intention.  He purposely takes story shortcuts in order to spend more time exploiting the tension and horror of each particular scene; something he also did effectively well with sci-fi in Pacific Rim. Some may find the long drawn out scenes of dark, shadowy halls tedious, but I felt that Guillermo’s style really shone in those moments.  It’s especially refreshing to see a movie get it’s best moments not from a jump scare, but from the eerie build up to the frights.  The scenes where the ghost Edith’s mother slowly reveals herself across a shadowy corridor still give me chills and has me looking over my shoulder.

But, while the ghosts are frightening in design, and the atmosphere is superb, there were some unfortunate cinematic elements that sadly took me out of the film at times.  In particular, I had a problem with the obvious use of CGI in the movie.  Now, Guillermo del Toro isn’t a novice when it comes to using CGI.  In fact, he used it to great effect in Pacific Rim.  But, he’s also been a known to use some really cool looking practical effects as well.  In particular, the amazing make-up used in Pan’s Labyrinth and Hellboy, where he brought to life some amazing creatures that become all the more terrifying because of their seemingly organic presence on screen.  What helped those movies out was a balance between the different kinds of effects needed.  In Crimson Peak, the CGI seemed to be favored a bit too heavily and it robs the movie of some of it’s effectiveness as a result.  There are CGI elements that do work, like a ghostly, pale shadow appearing out of the dust in an attic over a wheelchair, but there are others that look too artificial to be taken seriously.  I felt that the appearances of the many ghosts at Crimson Peak weren’t quite as horrifying as Guillermo had intended them to be, and that’s because the CGI used to create them looks a bit too cartoonish.  While their designs are unique (some of which del Toro illustrated himself), their animation left something to be desired and I could never fully feel scared as I was watching these ghosts chasing poor Edith through the house.  Had Guillermo del Toro used a more subtle approach with the ghosts in the movie, like old fashioned green screen and make-up effects, I might have bought the effect much better, but instead the movie suffers from unrealistic ghosts in a movie that’s dependent on them being scary.

But, the inconsistency of the film’s effects are balanced out by some incredibly effective, and sometimes scary performances from the cast.  Mia Wasikowska may have the most difficult time carrying much of this film and trying to convince us that she is seeing spirits all around her, but she does an effective job of giving Edith the depth of character needed to pull it off.  Edith, if handled poorly by another actress, could’ve turned into another boring ghost story protagonist, relegated to just reacting to the horrors around her instead of taking action.  But Mia manages to avoid portraying Edith as one note and part of the character’s charm is her curious nature, which comes out perfectly in her intelligent performance.  Tom Hiddleston also manages to perfectly embody the character of a playboy scoundrel without sinking too far into stereotype, and his character actually gets one of the more interesting arcs in the story.  But, if this movie belongs to anyone in particular, it’s Jessica Chastain as the sinister Lucille.  Chastain is relishing her role here, chewing up all kinds of scenery and managing to become even more chilling than the ghosts that haunt the mansion.  I just love the way that she goes over-the-top, but not to the point where it becomes detrimental to the story.  She’s unhinged, but grounded.  There’s an especially creepy bit with a spoon midway through the movie that is so perfectly creepy.  It’s the kind of performance that really sticks with you and it’s a testament to Jessica Chastain’s talent as an actress that she could make the insanity of this character feel so believable.  She’s by far the best thing about this movie and is probably the thing most worth watching overall, even with all the eye candy on display.

Of course, given that this is a Guillermo del Toro movie, there has to be something said about the production design.  For one thing, del Toro proves to be surprisingly adept with the Victorian period details, making the setting feel for the most part authentic to it’s time.  Likewise, del Toro also puts lavish excess into the movie when needed, particularly when it comes to the mansion itself.  The decrepit haunted house that serves as the setting of this movie feels very much like a Guillermo del Toro creation, with it’s twisted and foreboding nature.  Even simple design choices, like a patch of snow in the foyer originating from a hole in the ceiling, as well as the spiked archways in the halls, carry the del Toro signature.  Guillermo is probably only rivaled by Tim Burton for being identified by a particular aesthetic with his movies, which favors medieval Gothic inspiration along with a little Grand Guignol grotesquery thrown in.  In this movie, the designs used on the mansion help it to stand out and it almost makes the house a character in it’s own right.  I particularly like the way that the battered state of the home belies a little bit of what the mansion was like in it’s glory days, which makes it feel even more eerie once you take in the details.  There’s also a neat visual idea of the house sinking into the red clay that lies below it’s foundation.  This almost gives the audience the visual impression that the house bleeds, given the bright red hue of the clay once it liquefies and seeps through the floors and walls.  It’s a grotesque reinforcement of the mansion’s sinister nature, though it can come off to some as a little heavy handed to some.  I found it to be an interesting visual idea that stays true to the style of it’s visionary director.

Crimson Peak works as both a throwback to traditional ghost stories and as an unconventional horror movie.  Sure, it’s predictable and simplistic in many ways, but that’s part of the charm of it.  I just wouldn’t go into this movie expecting to be scared out of your mind.  This movie is much more of a triumph of production design, with some of the most beautiful imagery that you’ll see on the big screen this year.  The gore and horrifying scares are only in here to give this film it’s character as a horror flick.  And while not every idea or design hits it’s mark, like the less then effective CGI, the movie will still have enough for everyone to enjoy.  It has some effectively creepy atmosphere, some really standout performances, and also a surprisingly macabre sense of humor, which is another trademark of Guillermo del Toro’s style.  Compared to the director’s other films, I would say that this is a very solid exercise in genre film-making and not a particularly game-changing triumph.  It certainly doesn’t resonate as emotionally as Pan’s Labyrinth, but at the same time I don’t think Guillermo was trying to reach that far anyway.  This is his love letter to the ghost stories and horror films that he grew up with and he wanted to bring his own visual style into this kind of tale to see if he could do it justice, and in that regard, I believe he hit his mark.  So, I highly recommend Crimson Peak as a viewing experience, especially if you’re looking for something effectively spooky this Halloween season.  If anything, it’s just refreshing to see a horror movie that doesn’t have to rely on sudden jumps to scare it’s audience and instead relies on the dread of what may lurk around the corner in the shadows.

Rating: 8.5/10

As we enter October, we are beginning to see the first wave of Hollywood prestige pictures arriving at our local cineplexes, all with the purpose of either getting a head start on awards season buzz or just hoping to be a big enough draw to become a box office hit.  This October, we’ve got some of Hollywood’s most notable filmmakers all releasing their newest features in a jam packed couple of weeks, and in some cases in direct competition with one another.  This proved to be a dilemma for me, because even though I knew that I wanted to write a review for all of you this week, I didn’t exactly know until yesterday what it would be.  Certainly the big draw this weekend will be Ridley Scott’s new space-based adventure The Martian, which is already earning some outstanding reviews, but the local L.A. theaters near where I live gave me another movie option to choose from.  In certain IMAX theaters across the country, they are presenting an advance showing of Robert Zemeckis’ new big screen extravaganza The Walk, and fortunately one of those theaters is near me.  So, given two very promising options to choose from, it ultimately came down to a coin flip, and The Walk won out.  In the end, I think that this probably ended up being a better option to review.  For one thing, I get to review a movie that is not yet available everywhere, thereby giving you my readers a good early impression of a coming attraction, and secondly, after spending the last two fall seasons reviewing space themed movies like Gravity (2013) and Interstellar (2014), it was probably time to review something else out of a different genre.  So, let’s talk about The Walk.

This is the second film in director Robert Zemeckis’ thankful return to live action film-making, after spending  much of the 2000’s dabbling in motion capture animation with The Polar Express (2004), Beowulf (2007) and A Christmas Carol (2009).  After earning raves for his live action film Flight (2012), Zemeckis needed a story that appealed to his epic and sometimes unconventional tastes as a follow-up.  He managed to find that story in the true life tale of legendary tightrope walker Philipe Petit.  Petit gained notoriety in the 1970’s for his larger than life personality and his death defying stunt work, much of which he did illegally.  Trained for years in the circus, Petit later performed on the streets of Paris before getting the idea to walk a tightrope in some of the most dangerous places possible.  A successful walk across the towers of the Notre Dame Cathedral on his tightrope turned him into an international celebrity, but he felt that he didn’t command enough respect in his native France, so he sought to take his act on the road and find an even greater place to hang his wire.  And that place turned out to be the newly opened Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York City.  And that journey to that fateful walk between the towers became the inspiration for this particular film.  Adapted from Petit’s own memoir, “To Reach the Clouds,” The Walk tells the story of how Petit’s monumental stunt came to be and what was involved with pulling it off, and it’s a story that is comfortably within Robert Zemeckis’ range as a storyteller.  It’s epic, it’s colorful, it doesn’t take itself too seriously, and most importantly it’s just fun to watch.

The story is told entirely from Petit’s point of view, with the man himself (played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt, with an over the top French accent) addressing the audience directly.  This first hand account helps to drive the tone of the movie, which like Petit is energetic and unpredictable.  We see his early life as a street performer, walking tightrope on the streets of Paris to the amusement of passers-by.  There he meets Annie (Charlotte Le Bon) who would become the love of his life and the first accomplice in his greatest stunt, the walk between the towers, which he keeps referring to as “the coup.”  For years, he plans out the monumental walk, gathering more accomplices along the way including mathematician Jeff (Cesar Domboy) and photographer Jean-Louis (Clement Sibony).  Once the Towers are finished being constructed, Philipe makes his way to New York and covertly takes notes on every aspect of the building, making sure that every safety measure is taken before he makes his walk, something he learned from his longtime mentor Papa Rudy (Ben Kingsley).  In New York, he gains the help of more accomplices like J.P. (James Badge Dale) and Albert (Ben Schwartz) and has everything he needs to pull off his stunt.  The remainder of the film follows Philipe and his team as they put the plan into motion, trying to have everything go off without a hitch.  Much of the drama of the movie’s latter half comes from all the unexpected roadblocks that get in the way, including nearly getting caught by security and almost losing the wire when one of their support lines breaks.  Not to mention all the death-defying prep work that they must do on the edge of what was at the time the tallest structure in the world.  All this leads to a tense and harrowing road to the titular walk between the towers.

The Walk does an excellent job of dramatizing this true life event, but it’s not entirely a perfect adaptation either.  Perhaps part of the reason why this movie didn’t grab a hold of me as strongly as I hoped is because I had already seen the Oscar-winning documentary called Man on Wire (2009), which told the exact same story as this film.  Because of the documentary, I already knew where the story was going to go, which took some of the tension away from my experience watching this movie.  But, at the same time, if someone were to watch this movie without knowing what happens, they’ll probably be on the edge of their seats because this movie does indeed do an effective job of laying out the stakes involved.  I think my bone of contention comes from the contrasting depictions of the event from both movies.  They both do a great job of showing all the details that went into Philipe Petit’s walk, giving the story a very heist movie feel to it.  Unfortunately, the cinematic treatment feels more superficial in comparison, with the all embellishments becoming far more apparent and distracting as the story unfolds.  The Walk works at it’s best when it doesn’t try to show off how clever it can be and just let’s the story take hold on it’s own.  Now, using the embellishments may be an intentional choice on the filmmakers part, because the story is told solely from the perspective of it’s protagonist, something the documentary didn’t have as it used multiple accounts to tell it’s story.  That helps to make the cinematic excesses feel somewhat less intrusive, since it’s clear that Zemeckis wants the audience to see the experience from his main character’s sometimes boastful perspective.  But, even still, I felt that some of the cinematic flourishes reduced the tension in the story, which the documentary better conveyed overall.

But, in the end, it becomes a minor nitpick in an over effective movie.  One of the film’s best strengths is the direction of Robert Zemeckis.  Over his long and productive career, Zemeckis has become a master of blending drama and comedy together in his movies, and making both work to the story’s advantage.  He’s also been a director who has loved to push the medium of film further, trying out new techniques in camera work and visual effects, such as blending Live Action with Animation in Who Framed Roger Rabbit? (1988) or digitally inserting Tom Hanks into old news reel footage in Forrest Gump (1994); and let’s not forget that he changed cinema forever with a little trilogy of films called Back to the Future.  One of the reasons why I’m not as enthusiastic about his years in motion capture animation is because it took away some of the creativity from Zemeckis’ style away, as he no longer was bound to the constraints that the medium of film had put on him, and had forced him to be creative in order to overcome them.  Now that he’s returned to live action, the old rebellious Zemeckis is back, and his visual flair is just as strong as it was back in his heyday.  There are plenty of neat little ideas that he plays with in this movie, like showing a passage of time in Philipe’s training through the visual of his tightrope getting thinner with every step he walks across it.  Plus, Zemeckis keeps the tone light throughout, with Petit’s grandiose personality driving much of the tone.  It never gets too serious and much of the movie’s entertainment comes from it’s sense of humor.  Much like it’s subject, the movie has to keep a tight balance between it’s tense, action packed moments and it’s lighter comical tone, and Zemeckis proves to be a perfect match for this kind of project.

One thing that could prove difficult for audiences is the character of Philipe Petit himself.  Let’s just say subtlety is not one of the words you would use to describe the man.  He’s impulsive, confrontational, stubborn, but also something of a hero as well.  He manages to inspire the support of his friends, while at the same time driving them crazy with his seemingly death wish-like zealotry towards his mission.  This is largely reflected in Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s performance, which may be grating for some viewers.  Gordon-Levitt, who is not French, speaks throughout the movie in a very thick accent that may or may not make some people believe he is overacting in an embarrassing way.  I, however, didn’t mind his performance, because I think that his work here is meant to be over-the-top on purpose as a reflection of the real life Philipe Petit.  For those of you who have seen Man on Wire, you’ll know that Philipe has a very explosive personality and is certainly a show off.  I think that’s what Joseph Gordon-Levitt wanted to capture in his performance and it works to the advantage of this movie.  Philipe may be an obnoxious nut, but he’s a lovable nut too.  What matters is that you want him to succeed, and the movie does an excellent job of getting us on his side.  In that respect, Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s wacky performance is exactly what is called for, and he manages to carry the film as a result.  His works is also grounded by an able supporting cast.  I particularly like the subplot involving Cesar Domboy’s Jeff, who’s fear of heights is challenged greatly by Philipe’s mission.  Overall, Gordon-Levitt’s Philipe Petit fits right in line with many of Robert Zemeckis’ other larger than life characters, and becomes a hero worth rooting for, even while he spends the whole movie breaking the law.

But, of course, this wouldn’t be a Zemeckis film unless it had a sense of scale to it.  And where The Walk really shines is in it’s visuals.  The movie was shot in 3D, which does help enhance the experience in some ways, but the movie can still hold up in 2D as well, thanks to a strong visual presentation throughout.  Shot by cinematographer Dariusz Wolski (Pirates of the Caribbean), the movie is very colorful and does an effective job of establishing the sense of place within the movie, especially when capturing the look of the 1970’s time period.  Of course, the biggest challenge of the movie is getting the high wire walk itself to look just right.  One of the movie’s best achievements is recreating the Twin Towers themselves, which almost becomes a character in their own right; a mighty and unpredictable beast that our hero must conquer.  Because of the attacks on 9/11, the towers no longer exist today, so the entire location of the film’s climax had to be recreated from scratch, and amazingly, with the help of practical sets and visual effects wizardry, the Twin Towers come alive again in this movie.  Not only does the movie authentically make you feel like you are there, but the size and scope of the setting also really enhances the experience of seeing Philipe make his walk across his wire.  I especially like the moments when the camera glides overhead, showing us something that only Philipe would have seen during his stunt and that’s the precipitous space in between the towers, which he refers to as “the void.”  And that visual of the void is one of the things that really makes the 3D experience worth it.  It’s a great triumph of epic film-making when you make a moment like that work in your movie, and it’s one of the advantages that this film has over the documentary.

So, in conclusion, I would say that The Walk is a worthwhile movie experience, even if it’s not a perfect one.  It does hold up within the Robert Zemeckis filmography with it’s delightful blend of humor and tense drama, and it doesn’t try to make itself feel more important than it should, which is refreshing for a Hollywood prestige picture.  It may not be as laugh-out-load funny as Back to the Future, nor as emotional as Forrest Gump or Cast Away (2000), but it’s a worthy product from one of Hollywood’s great masters.  And being in a monumental year for the filmmaker, given that Back to the Future (1985) is reaching it’s 30th anniversary, this movie helps to re-confirm that Zemeckis is still going strong all these years later.  The only thing that could have been more perfect is if the movie was released on October 21 this year, since that’s the date featured in the fictional future from Back to the Future Part II (1989), but I guess that would have been too much of a nerdy expectation to hold the director to.  For what it is, The Walk is an invigorating movie experience that does an adequate job of depicting a remarkable human achievement and the steps it took to pull that event off.  If you want a more in depth look into the story, I recommend watching the documentary Man on Wire, which gives you more perspective from everyone involved.  But, to get a sense of what it was actually like to be on the wire itself, then you’ll get a magnificent experience out of this as well, which treats the subject with as much attention to detail that a good movie can.  If it’s at your local IMAX screens right now, then I highly recommend that you check this out, but if you have to wait another week, I hope that this review has been helpful in convincing you to check it out.  If you see it, find the biggest screen possible, because this is one movie that uses every inch to it’s maximum.

Rating: 8/10

Where did it all go wrong for the Fantastic Four?  Without a doubt, one of the marquee titles in the Marvel Comics catalog, the dynamic quartet of Mr. Fantastic, Invisible Girl, the Human Torch and The Thing have struggled greatly to transition to the big screen, with very little success.  Roger Corman produced a low budget version of the comic series in 1994, and it was deemed so bad that it never was given an official release.  In 2005, Fox and Marvel jointly produced a big budget adaptation that while a mild success at the box office nevertheless received an indifferent response from audiences.  A sequel to that film in 2007 re-teamed the same crew and cast (which included future “Captain America” Chris Evans) but ended up loosing more of it’s audience with another sub-par effort and tepid box office.  Keep in mind, these films were made at a time before Marvel formed it’s own studio and had more control over it’s own characters.  Sadly, the lackluster efforts by these previous iterations of the Fantastic Four have done a big disservice to the characters; so much so that there is virtually no audience interest left in them anymore, and the continuation of the series is purely just so big studios like Fox can keep the rights away from Marvel; hence the existence of this recent reboot.  The Fantastic Four have unfortunately become the abused and forgotten foster child of the comic book world, kept in the loop purely for exploitation and shut away from it’s rightful home of Marvel Studios where it would be cared and nurtured for in the right way.  With a reboot, many hoped that new life could come back to this struggling franchise, but unfortunately for the Fantastic Four, they are still a long way from home.

The new Fantastic Four arrives with a new cast headed by Miles Teller (Whiplash) as Reed Richards/ Mr. Fantastic, Kate Mara (House of Cards) as Sue Storm/ Invisible Girl, Michael B. Jordan (Fruitvale Station) as Johnny Storm/ The Human Torch and Jamie Bell (Billy Elliot) as Ben Grimm/ The Thing; a new vision guided by director Josh Trank (Chronicle); and an entirely different tone than we’ve seen from it before.  And overall, these are all promising ingredients that could have made this Fantastic Four really shine and live up to the title’s potential.  Sadly, the end result is not at all, shall I say, fantastic.  It’s really the exact opposite.  Rarely do I see so many talented people make something as bad as this movie.  Of course, it’s following in the footsteps of some already really bad films, but this reboot is really where the franchise has hit rock bottom.  And never have I seen such an ambitious outing get released dead on arrival either.  Even the director of the film is already disowning it; taking to Twitter this week to trash the movie (albeit he later deleted his tweet and apologized).  I tried to keep an open mind while I watched the movie, but almost from the opening moments I could tell that something was not right about this movie and that all the bad buzz was confirmed.  There is plenty wrong here, from the out-of-place somber tone, to the terrible and lazy CGI, to the pathetic writing, and to the, sad to say, lackluster direction (you can complain all you want Mr. Trank, but you were part of the problem too).  But the overall lingering problem with the Fantastic Four that this movie clearly underlines is that the characters are just being used and not embraced by their filmmakers, and that it’s clearly time for them to go home.  Otherwise, we get a studio driven face-plant such as this mess.

What should never be a problem with superhero movies is the set-up, and yet Fantastic Four takes an excruciatingly long time to set up it’s story and characters and set into motion all the events that will make them who they are.  The story follows Reed Richards as he develops the key to inter-dimensional travel through his scientific experimentation alongside his childhood friend, Ben Grimm.  He is soon brought into contact with Dr. Franklin Storm (Reg E. Cathey) who offers to bring Richard’s experiments to their full potential in his high tech laboratory within the Baxter Building in New York City.  There he meets Dr. Storm’s equally brilliant children Sue and Johnny, along with the nihilistic and rebellious young physicist Victor von Doom (Toby Kebbell).  They successfully finish the project, but instead of handing off the glory of the first test run over to corporate interests, Reed and his team decide to secretly make the journey themselves.  Once the portal opens for them, they arrive on the mysterious Planet Zero which contains an unknown power source in the form of a green liquid.  The liquid quickly shows that it has a mind of it’s own and starts attacking the explorers, consuming Doom as it’s first victim.  As the team tries to return to their home world, they are exposed to the energy source and are physically mutated in the process.  Reed develops the ability to stretch his body beyond it’s natural limits; Sue gains the ability to turn herself invisible and create force fields; Johnny can command and shroud his body in fire; and Ben transforms into a super strong being made of pure rock.  Jealousy and contempt for their situation keeps the team from becoming a cohesive unit at first, made even more complicated when Government interests start to interfere, but their allegiances are put to the test once Victor von Doom returns, with dangerous powers of his own.

The worst part of trying to get a reboot to work is that the film must retread old ground in order to establish itself anew and wipe away the old version of the story we already know.  Remarkably, the movie does a poor job of doing both.  Not only does it fail at establishing this new version of the characters, adding nothing new or getting things entirely wrong, but it also takes way too long to get itself going.  That summary of the plot that I just gave you is 75% of the movie; that’s how long it took for the film to set itself up.  The same plot elements that took up the majority of this film’s run-time made up only the first act of the 2005 version.  In that film, the Fantastic Four had their powers by the 30-minute mark of that movie, which allowed for the rest of the flick to focus on things like team building and character development, albeit not all of that time was used well.  Here, it’s all set-up, which would have been fine if there was some depth to it and a little more intrigue.  But no.  We are asked to accept a lot of this movie at face value with no real insight into these characters’ feelings or their motivations.  I was especially baffled at how little development there was in showing how the characters deal with their new found powers.  The movie actually cuts ahead a year in time showing the heroes already having mastered their powers.  I’m sorry, but that’s a big problem when you just gloss over a big part of these characters’ development like that.  As flawed as the 2005 version was, at least it devoted time to showing how the Fantastic Four adapted to their new powers; especially when it came to the frustration shown by Ben Grimm (played in that version by actor Michael Chiklis) as he was unable to blend in to the rest of society like the others given his appearance.  You take away that growth of character and what you end up with is a very shallow and empty movie.

These story issues really stem from a poor screenwriting effort by writer/producer Simon Kinberg and director Josh Trank.  Revisions to the origins of the characters and their story arc are fine if done in an interesting way; but here almost no effort was put in to making it at all distinctive.  The whole project comes off as being made by committee, with everything dictated by a checklist of what multiple people believe should be necessary in a Fantastic Four movie.  This leads to a lot of the familiar elements of the comic series being shoehorned in; sometimes in horribly inappropriate ways.  For example, you learn that the origins of The Thing’s famous catchphrase, “It’s Clobbering Time,” came out of what Ben Grimm’s older brother would used to say to him whenever he beat him up as a child.  Kinda takes the fun out of that phrase, doesn’t it?  There’s plenty of other grown-inducing references thrown around throughout the movie and instead of appealing to some of the audiences’ nostalgia for the comics, it instead infuriates die hard fans who are watching their beloved characters turn into something they’re not.  But, it’s not like the Fantastic Four has ever been free of bad screenwriting before; it’s just that up to now the series was seen as dumb rather than insulting.  And a large reason why this script does worse by the characters is because it injects the wrong sort of tone to the story.  This movie is unfortunately part of the tale-end of a recent trend in Hollywood reboots where filmmakers mistakenly believe that making something gritty automatically makes it good.  What worked for Batman in Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy doesn’t necessarily work for stuff like The Amazing Spiderman, or Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and especially not Fantastic Four.  And this is where part of the blame falls on Josh Trank, because even though he believes studio tampering ruined his project, he’s still the one responsible for setting the movie’s aesthetic and tone  in the first place.

The movie’s tone and gritty visual aesthetic just feel’s so out of place in a series that should be lighthearted and filled with visual wonder.  It leads me to wonder if Josh Trank was the right choice to lead this reboot in the first place.  His debut film Chronicle (2012) was a great visual experiment, putting a superhero story within the confines of the found footage sub-genre and making it work. But Chronicle’s harrowing story-line lent itself well to a grittier tone and style.  In Fantastic Four, the bleakness is just a wrong fit.  When it came to the comics, the focus of the Fantastic Four series was always about family and the wonders of science.  In this film, you get arguments between the heroes and a villain who likes to make peoples’ heads explode; and this is what the movie considers drama.  Trank may have a point about too many outside influences spoiling what could have been a cohesive narrative, but his style also contributed to the ruin of this movie.  The movie is bleak, devoid of color, and features a lot of lackluster digital enhancement.  The 2005 version might have been dumb, but at least it was colorful and tried to keep the tone light, which made it more tolerable to look at.  I never thought it was possible to make a Fantastic Four movie look ugly, but this movie managed to do it.  Even the way that Josh Trank composes the shots feels wrong.  There’s no visual flair here like we’ve seen from better super hero movies from the Marvel Cinematic Universe, or even in the recent X-Men movies.  Even Zack Snyder’s much maligned Man of Steel (2013) had a visual aesthetic that couldn’t be easily dismissed as amateur.  With Fantastic Four, we get what is probably the most unappealing and flat visual presentation of a super hero movie that we’ve had in many many years, and maybe probably ever.

Perhaps the biggest casualty of all is the characters themselves.  The sad thing is that all of them are played by actors that I know can do better and have proven it in years past.  Here, every single one of them is wasted with underdeveloped characterizations and painfully on-the-nose dialogue.  Much of the focus is put on the relationship between Reed and Ben, and the actors playing them have some semblance of chemistry, but the movie’s direction and script gives them nothing to chew on in their performances, leading to a lot of unintentionally awkward interactions.  Ben Grimm is especially mismanaged in this movie, becoming more brooding and pessimistic here compared with other versions.  In the past, The Thing was often the team’s moral center and heart, and the one who often lightened up the mood with his positive outlook on life despite his appearance.  This version of the Thing does none of that, and is completely out of character with his moody personality.  The added complication of having the character visualized purely through CGI animation also adds another layer of disconnect between the character and the audience, which I don’t particularly blame actor Jamie Bell for, since he doesn’t have a say over how the character will look in the final film.  The remaining cast is also wasted throughout.  Kate Mara is given almost nothing to work with and is mostly forgotten; sadly because she’s the girl character in a film that mostly caters to a male audience.  And Michael B. Jordan’s Johnny Storm is portrayed as such a volatile hot head that the movie comes dangerously close to making his character a racial stereotype.  The only character that’s slightly improved upon from past versions is the villainous Doom; albeit in his final form.  Past versions of this character have been so lame, especially the version played by actor Julian McMahon in the 2005 version.  This version of Dr. Doom is at least intimidating.  Unfortunately, even here they get the character mostly wrong, especially in his world-destroying master plan.  Doom in the comics doesn’t want to destroy the world; he wants to conquer it.  There’s a difference.  Not only that, but his presence in the movie is so minimal (eight minutes of screen-time in a very rushed climax) that even here his potential is wasted.

Overall, this is not just a failed reboot of a series that still has a lot of potential, but it also squashes any credibility that the Fantastic Four may still have left as a viable franchise.  It more than anything proves that Fox should no longer be the rights holders for these characters and that they should be in their rightful place alongside the other Marvel characters at their home studio.  Sadly, Fox may continue to press on with more Fantastic Four movies in the future, purely as a way to keep the rights from reverting back to Marvel; that is unless this movie flops so badly that Fox will have no choice but to give it up.  I rarely want to root for a movie to fail, considering that some good people have played a part in it’s making, but this is one of those cases where I am actively hoping for a flop.  The Fantastic Four characters deserve a lot better and Marvel should be the ones who can help bring them back to their rightful place in the pantheon of heroes.  Josh Trank may have been a little rash and lacking in self-awareness when he accused Fox of ruining his film, but he’s not entirely without reason to be upset.  Fox has tried way too hard to build the Fantastic Four franchise into their own baby, and it’s backfiring on them.  They wanted it to be a franchise rebirth, but instead we’ve got another possible franchise killer like Joel Schumacher’s Batman and Robin (1997) or Marc Webb’s The Amazing Spider-man 2 (2014); movies so bad that it forced their franchise characters into a long hibernation.  And probably the greatest sin of all is the wasted potential.  A promising director with a capable cast and a franchise in desperate need of a fresh new look should have made this Fantastic Four a home run.  Instead, it’s turned into a miserable failure.  The only good thing that may come out of it is that the characters may be closer now to returning home than ever before.  It’s your move now Fox.  In the end, Fantastic Four doesn’t live up to it’s potential nor it’s namesake, unless you can consider it a double F.  And in my mind, I think even a four would be too generous for this failure of a movie.

Rating: 3/10

The Marvel Cinematic Universe has become such an overwhelming success that it has now made the Marvel brand one of the most powerful names in entertainment.  Marvel Comics had a rough history during the 80’s and 90’s; never seeming to get much traction with movie adaptations of their properties and watching their rival DC Comics effortlessly making millions off of blockbuster hits like Superman (1978) and Batman (1989).  Not only that, but when the rise of comic book movies in the 90’s did take hold, Marvel had to sell off the cinematic rights to their characters to many different studios, helping them to at least gain exposure but also loosing creative control over their characters on the big screen as well.  That all changed with the acquisition of Marvel by Disney and the subsequent formation of Marvel Studios.  Now, Marvel had a power base to take back their many different characters and make movies their own way.  The results have completely reversed Marvel’s fortunes and now they are the envy of Hollywood.  But, what is distinctly special about the success of Marvel’s cinematic universe is that not only does it highlight many of their marquee characters (Iron Man, Captain America,The Hulk) but it has also given the spotlight to characters that normally would’ve been ignored.  This was probably best illustrated by the release of Guardians of the Galaxy (2014), where Marvel took one of their more obscure titles made it into a hit film; some would say, like myself, that it was their crowning achievement, so far.  But, there are other characters that are also getting the spotlight today because of the ever expanding reach of the MCU, and that includes one unlikely Marvel all-star; Ant-Man.

Ant-Man has had one of the more interesting development cycles in recent years.  Planned long before the beginning of Marvel’s big launch of it’s universe, Ant-Man was a dream project for acclaimed British comedy writer/director Edgar Wright.  Wright has always been a huge fan and champion of the pint sized hero, and he spent years crafting the screenplay with his frequent collaborator and fellow filmmaker Joe Cornish.  But, for years, the project often took a back seat as Marvel had yet to consolidate it’s properties back into their own studio.  After the successful Phase 1 of Marvel’s Cinematic Universe completed with the release of the mega-hit The Avengers (2012), Phase 2 was put into action and with it, the announcement that Edgar Wright’s Ant-Man would become a reality.  Wright spent the next few years putting together the production of his long in-development script and that included finalizing the visual representation of Ant-Man’s powers as well as casting the right actors for the roles.  Everything looked like it would help lead to yet another successful launch of a somewhat obscure Marvel superhero, but around two years ago the unimaginable happened.  News spread that Edgar Wright was leaving the project altogether, and that another director was being hired on to complete the film.  Apparently, creative differences between Wright and Marvel was to blame, as the director refused to compromise his vision to fit within Marvel’s increasingly stringent playbook regarding it’s cinematic universe.  This eventually led to speculation that the movie was in trouble, and could end up being Marvel’s first failure as an independent film company.  But, now that the movie has finally made it to theaters, audiences can now decide for themselves, and thankfully, Ant-Man is not the realization of our worst fears, nor is it anything more than we expected.

Ant-Man’s screenplay and story is still credited to Edgar Wright and Joe Cornish, but it was also given a quick rewrite by the film’s star Paul Rudd and his frequent collaborator Adam McKay.  While much of the film does feel disjointed because of the two different creative teams working on it, it more or less retains Wright and Cornish’s original story outline.  The plot involves a master thief named Scott Lang (Rudd) who takes a job where he is hired to break into a high tech vault owned by an eccentric billionaire.  Once he’s broken in, he finds no cash or riches, but instead an odd looking suit with a matching helmet.  Curious to learn why this suit was in the vault to begin with, Lang tries it on and soon learns that the suit has the power to shrink it’s wearer down to the size of an insect.  After Lang’s trial by fire with the outfit, he soon meets the previous owner, renowned scientist Hank Pym (Michael Douglas).  Pym apparently wanted Lang to find the suit because he needed someone young and bold like him to break into his old facilities and steal something with the same powers.  That something is a prototype suit called the Yellowjacket, which has been developed as a weapon of war by Pym’s former protege Darren Cross (Corey Stoll).  Lang agrees to help Pym and is trained by the old man and his daughter Hope van Dyne (Evangeline Lily) in order to harness all the different capabilities that the suit has.  In time, he learns that the suit enables him not only to shrink, but also allows him to be ten times stronger because of the increased density of his atoms.  He also is given the ability to speak with ants through a special frequency in his helmet’s antennas and control the ants to do his bidding as a result.  With his powers refined, Lang and Pym put the plan into action and try to stop Cross from selling the Yellowjacket to the wrong people, or using the suit’s mighty powers for his own sinister reasons.

The best that I can say about this finished film of Ant-Man after all the behind the scenes mayhem that preceded it is that it doesn’t come off as a disaster.  It’s a very capably made action film with a lot of funny humorous moments and plenty of entertainment value.  As another entry in the growing Marvel universe, it’s also very serviceable.  There are plenty of references to other things going on in the larger Marvel world, including some very welcome cameos from established characters in the universe that helps to tie everything together.  The worst thing that I can say about Ant-Man however is that it’s nothing special either.  Marvel has unfortunately fallen victim to it’s own success in this regard, because at this point, after several groundbreaking and original films in their canon, having a film that is only par for the course is not good enough anymore.  Ant-Man is the first movie from Marvel in recent years that just feels ordinary.  I wasn’t blown away by anything in this movie; it just rehashes things from other super hero movies that I’ve already seen done a million times before: the reformed criminal trying to live a better life for the sake of his daughter, the mentor who’s trying to right the wrongs of his past, the corporate hot shot who’s clearly the bad guy, the training montage, etc.  It’s almost like you can just sense the checklist that the Marvel corporate heads had laid out for this movie and each one getting checked off with every scene.  In the end, that seems to be what led to Edgar Wrights departure from this project.  This Ant-Man is the most committee driven Marvel movie to date, and that’s not a good thing for a company that has continually been leading the way with regards to  originality in the film-making community these last couple years.

My sense overall is that I might have liked this movie better had Edgar Wright been allowed to see his vision through to the end.  If you’ve seen any of Wright’s other movies, like his Cornetto trilogy (which I reviewed in detail here) or even his oddball comic adaptation Scott Pilgrim vs. The World (2010), you’ll know that he’s a director with a distinct visual style.  Applying that said style to the character of Ant-Man would have made this a truly unique experience unlike anything else seen from Marvel.  But, sadly Marvel’s master plan won out and Wright proved to be too original a visionary for what they had in mind.  Unfortunately, with Wright’s departure, the reigns of the production were given over to director Peyton Reed.  Reed is a capable director, but he also lacks a distinctive trademark style to his name.  If you look at his filmography (2008’s Yes Man, 2006’s The Break-Up, and 2000’s Bring it On), there’s no real definition to his work.  He’s just a director for hire rather than a visual artist.  Now, that’s perfectly fine for someone who’s worked in the rom-com field where all you need is someone with basic film-making talent, but in the Marvel cinematic universe, it’s just not enough.  Ant-Man contains no distinct look that helps to separate it from other super hero movies.  The cinematography is very flat and it makes this movie feel no more different than a TV pilot at times, especially in the quieter dialogue scenes.  Peyton Reed thankfully doesn’t spoil the experience with his directing, but he also doesn’t help it to soar either.  It’s just good enough, which sadly is no longer good enough for fans of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.  What has been the driving force of Marvel’s success is that each movie can stand on it’s own free from the bonds of the MCU’s over-arching plot, especially when it comes to each franchise’s own style.  Captain America sets itself apart with it’s gritty realism while Thor sets itself apart by embracing it’s operatic fantasy elements.  And Guardians of the Galaxy is just a whole other animal altogether.  By comparison, the plainness of Ant-Man sadly just makes it feel smaller in comparison.

But, as I said before in this review, Ant-Man is also far from being a disaster.  What ultimately saves this movie in the end is the performances by the more than capable cast.  Paul Rudd in particular works out perfectly as the title character.  He’s charming and funny, but still manages to carry the weight of emotions that the character must also express in this story-line.  I like the fact that Rudd is trying to make the character of Scott Lang different from all the other heroes in the Marvel universe.  He’s a wise-cracker, but not obnoxious, and he brings out the darker aspects of the character without overdoing it.  He runs a fine middle ground between all the other personalities of the Marvel heroes we’ve seen to date; he’s not as irreverent and in-your-face as Robert Downey Jr.’s Iron Man, nor as stoic as Chris Hemsworth’s Thor.  The casting of Rudd was one of Edgar Wright’s biggest contributions to the finished movie, and I’m happy to say that he got the right man, and that he’s going to continue to play a key role in the continuing Marvel Universe.  The rest of the cast also contributes to the overall effectiveness of the movie.  Michael Douglas especially shines as Hank Pym, the original Ant-Man.  Pym is probably one of Marvel’s more notorious main characters, with a very troubled history, and Douglas does a perfect job of conveying that long history of the character through his tortured and heartfelt performance.  Much of the movie’s best moments belong to him, especially when he berates Scott Lang whenever he screws up.  Corey Stoll also should be commended for taking a villainous character who could have come off as flat and boring and make him genuinely terrifying with his unhinged performance.   Actor Michael Pena is also fun to watch here as one of Scott Lang’s safe-cracking associates, with his long-winded ramblings being one of the movie’s most hilarious highlights.  Really, there are no weak points at all in this varied cast.  Everyone came to work and there’s not a single false note among any of them, which helps to make this movie far more entertaining that it would have been otherwise.

Despite the lackluster visual aesthetic that the overall movie has, I will say that the action scenes in the film are indeed very well staged.  The movie does an especially good job of visualizing the experience of Ant-Man shrinking down to his small size.  The special effects in this movie are top notch, and the sense of scale given to these moments are well done.  The best moments belong to the clever visual ways that Ant-Man fights against his enemies, whether it’s jumping onto a gun as it fires and then growing back to normal size to lay the final knockout punch to the man who fired at him, or whether it’s exchanging blows inside a closed briefcase with a shrunken Yellowjacket.  The final confrontation between the hero and the villain is especially well done, with the two adversaries fighting on the rails of a toy train set.  The movie makes this setting look larger than life and grandiose from the shrunken point of view of it’s characters and brilliantly cuts back to the POV of a normal sized person, showing the hilariously small impact that these two are actually making in their fight.  There are certainly holdovers from Edgar Wright’s vision of the movie in these action scenes, and I’m happy to see the movie retain them.  It almost makes up for the blandness of every other scene surrounding them.  At the very least, it makes the Ant-Man powers easy to convey to a larger audience and gives him the awesome superhero moments that he deserves.

So, did Marvel do right by the character in the end with their shakeup in the director’s seat.  While I don’t believe that Peyton Reed failed the character in the end, I still feel that something was lost in the departure of Edgar Wright from the project.  His original style would have certainly made this movie stand out visually from all the rest of the Marvel movies, instead of just following the lead that all the other ones have set.  But, this movie could also have been a lot worse, and I’ll credit director Reed for seeing this project through to completion.  There’s no doubt that this movie will ride the coattails of the successful movies that have become before it, and it’s not undeserving of that success either.  I’m certainly happy that they cast the right guy as Ant-Man, and that the visual representation of his powers were well done overall.  I just hope that the eventual continuation of the Ant-Man franchise will also allow for more creative freedom in the subsequent sequels.  Maybe they can even convince Edgar Wright to return and do an Ant-Man sequel on his terms, now that the pressure of establishing a new character is out of the way.  Overall, this is a passable, but not quite revolutionary addition to the Marvel Cinematic Universe.  It certainly didn’t make me angry about the direction it took like Iron Man 3 (2013) did, but at the same time it did give me a transcendent experience like Guardians of the Galaxy either.  Marvel needs to realize that the bar has been set extremely high now, and that they need to make every movie from here out both unique and entertaining.  Retreading old ground and putting out the minimum requirement is only going to reduce the intended impact from here out.  So, in the case of Ant-Man’s first cinematic outing, it’s still a rousing and entertaining time at the movies for the most part, but compared to his Marvel brethren, Ant-Man’s still just a small fish in the big pond of Marvel’s own making.

Rating: 7.5/10

The Fourth of July weekend has commonly been a strong one for summer movies.  Amid all the barbecuing and the fireworks, a good helping of American moviegoers also fit in a trip to the cineplex as well, and Hollywood usually reserves that time slot for some of their biggest attractions.  While the summer season usually sees successful releases for films of all kinds of genres, it’s usually the the action flick that rules the Fourth of July weekend.  Whether or not that’s a reflection of the holiday spirit or the kind of “rah-rah”, guns-blazing patriotism that comes along with the celebrations is uncertain, but it’s definitely the common pattern of the holiday weekend at the movies.  In the past, we’ve seen this time frame dominated by the likes of Transformers (2007), The Amazing Spiderman (2012), Men in Black (1997), and the appropriately titled Independence Day (1996).  And given that movie studios spread out their releases over a long weekend frame during the holiday, this is also a time of year where new movies are given a longer head start, making it to theaters on a Wednesday as opposed to the traditional Friday.  All this to show that the Fourth of July is a marquee date on the calendar for Hollywood.  This year, we are seeing a very strong summer season with movies like Avengers: Age of Ultron, Inside Out, and Jurassic World all holding very strong beyond their opening weekends.  Competition in this field is tough, which is why Paramount is hoping their big Fourth of July release can live up to the legacy that this weekend usually holds.  And what better way to celebrate the founding of America than an action flick sequel starring an Austrian born former state governor.

Terminator: Genisys is the fifth entry in the long running Terminator franchise.  Though the Terminator series started off strong in the 80’s with the now iconic original film, and was made even more legendary by it’s amazing sequel, Terminator 2: Judgement Day (1992), it has since struggled to find it’s direction with all the subsequent titles released thereafter.  Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (2003) was a largely forgettable cash-in, and Terminator Salvation (2009) took a clever and interesting concept and ruined it with a poor execution.  Terminator: Genisys marks the latest attempt to revitalize the series and update it for the times we now live in.  The movie has one thing in it’s favor; it marks the return of franchise star Arnold Schwarzenegger, who’s slipping back into the familiar territory of action flicks now that his years in politics are over.  It certainly is one of the movie’s best selling points, because beyond that, this film is a hard sell.  Relying heavily on it’s brand name and the star power of the Governator, Terminator: Genisys unfortunately tries way too hard to squeeze out any last ounce of substance in this franchise.  The same can be said about the last couple Terminator movies as well, but it feels much more apparent this time around given the way that the story goes.  Here, instead of moving the plot forward in time, we are taken back to the beginning and are shown the world of Terminator thrown into disarray.  Terminator: Genisys is a very complicated movie, perhaps more so than any other in the franchise, and more than anything, it’s largely due to the direction they chose to take with this new entry.

The story begins in the now not too distant future of 2027 (back in the 1984 original, this would have been seen as a far off future date).  The world is a wasteland now ruled by a race of robots controlled by the omnipresent artificial intelligence system known as Skynet.  Only a small band of human resistance remains to take down the cybernetic overlords, and they are rallied together by their leader John Connor (Jason Clarke).  Upon entering a key Skynet facility, they uncover the robot army’s secret weapon, a time machine.  They learn that one of the robots, a Terminator, has already gone through the machine and was sent back to the past, setting up the events of the first movie.  John Connor makes plans to use Skynet’s own weapon against it, and send one of his own men into the past to stop the Terminator from killing his mom, Sarah Connor (Emilia Clarke) before he is born.  Kyle Reese (Jai Courtney) volunteers for the job and is sent back to the past, only to find that things are not what John Connor said they would be.  Instead of saving a helpless and unaware Sarah, she ends up saving him with the help of her own guardian Terminator whom she affectionately refers to as Pops (Schwarzenegger).  Kyle soon learns that the timeline that he’s from has been altered and that Skynet has begun a whole new strategy to ensure it’s survival; a Trojan horse operating system known as Genisys.  In order to stop Genisys from going online, Sarah and Kyle travel into the future year of 2017 in order to prevent it’s launch, and they soon learn that Skynet has sent an unexpected guardian to the past as well to prevent them foiling it’s plan; John Connor, modified into a terminator.

This is a plot twist that could have been a shocker, had the studio not spoiled it in the trailers.  But, it’s only one of the many twists and turns that this movie takes throughout the course of it’s running time, and that’s largely the biggest problem with the movie.  This is a very plot heavy film, where many scenes are devoted to just explaining everything.  But, by doing this, the movie removes any suspense that’s needed to be built up.  It’s as if the filmmakers didn’t trust the audience’s ability to comprehend the finer details of the story, so it has everything spoon fed to us.  Pretty much the entirety of the movie’s plot is as follows: action scene followed by exposition followed by another action scene followed by even more exposition; explosions and talking, repeat until the end credits.  That’s about it.  There’s nothing remarkable about the story here; it’s just more of the same from beginning to end, which is a far cry from where the series started.  The 1984 original was a masterwork of suspense that didn’t need to detail everything about the universe that these characters exist in; in the end it was just a thrilling cat and mouse chase that was elevated by fantastic characterizations.  Terminator 2 went into a more action oriented mode of storytelling, but the action scenes were so big and creative, that it didn’t matter how complicated the plot was.  Terminator: Genisys is more or less just another routine action film, and one that relies heavily on your knowledge of the other movies in the series.  As a result, it lacks identity, which is something that has characterized all the Terminator movies made without it’s original creator, James Cameron.  The only defining thing about this movie is it’s attempts to update the technological reality of the Terminator world based on what we know today.  There’s a statement made in here about the over reliance with integrated media in our lives, but it gets lost pretty easily in this convoluted plot.  Basically Skynet has become an evil version of the Cloud system here.

There’s also a significant lack of vision in this movie.  Visually, the movie is as basic and dull as an action movie can get.  There’s no mood established, no trick photography; really nothing at all that we haven’t seen before in about a hundred other action movies.  And, I hate to keep bringing up the other films in the franchise, but it’s a comparison that has to be made, because vision is one of the things that once defined the franchise back in the day.  Before James Cameron brought the sinking of the Titanic to cinematic life and took us to the far off world of Pandora, his name was undeniably linked to the Terminator series.  He redefined the sci-fi genre with 1984’s The Terminator with groundbreaking special effects and a unique take on the concept of time-travel; something that even astrophysics scholars have written papers on in response.  The sequel took all of Cameron’s concepts and made them even more epic, establishing this franchise as not only a masterful work of science fiction, but one of the most defining ones of all time.  Terminator 2 also broke new ground in the visual effects field, pioneering a lot of new technologies in CGI, which brought the amazing liquid metal T-1000 to life.  Since then, Terminator has stopped being the leader of the pack and has just gone through the paces instead, particularly in the visual department.  Genisys is directed by Alan Taylor (Thor: The Dark World), who takes a workmanlike approach to the movie that’s not bad, but not anything spectacular either.  He’s basically just standing on the shoulders of what’s been done before.  And what’s particularly troubling about the safe approach here is how unremarkable the visual effects are now.  Really, the original Cameron-directed classics hold up much better as showcases for CGI than this more modern film does, because Cameron knew how to uses his effects for maximum impact.  Here, it’s just an overload of CGI that altogether looks the same from scene to scene.

But, not everything in the movie is a disaster.  There is one saving grace in the film and that’s the presence of Arnold.  Let’s face it, these movies would not exist without Mr. Schwarzenegger’s star power and remarkably he’s still able to leave a much welcomed impression in this series. It’s not a remarkable performance per say, but Arnold does provide much needed levity in this movie with some hilariously delivered one-liners throughout.  And it shouldn’t be surprising how comfortable he feels in this role either.  It’s the part that made him a star, and he slips back into it here comfortably like an old pair of pants.  Honestly, if the whole movie had just followed his lead, it would have been much more enjoyable to watch, but sadly he’s the one bright spot in a muddled mess.  Even still, he’s a welcome element that helps improve the film significantly.  I was smiling every time he was on screen, partly because of the nostalgia factor but also because Schwarzenegger still has unmatched charisma as a action movie star.  If you take anything away from this movie, it will be any moment that he’s in.  There’s a nice running gag throughout the film with Arnold’s Terminator making attempts to blend in, which results in an awkward forced smile (best seen when he’s getting his mugshot taken).  There’s also another good moment when he and Kyle Reese get into a friendly competition as they try to outpace each other while loading their weapons.  It’s little things like this that help make Arnold’s presence here worthwhile and he easily becomes the beating heart of this movie as a whole.

Sadly the remainder of the cast is a lot less consistent.  Emilia Clarke is feisty enough as Sarah Connor, but her performance retains none of the resonance that she shows weekly in her role as Daenerys Targaryen on Game of Thrones.  Her Sarah Connor is much more of a passive force this time around in the story, sidelined to basically reacting to the events rather than taking matters into her own hands, which is what Linda Hamilton’s version of the character did so well before.  But I think that it’s less to do with how hard she performs and more so to do with the limitations put on her character in the script.  Clarke does the best with what she’s given and thankfully she does a passable job embodying the now iconic heroine.  (Interesting side note, Emilia Clarke now shares the role with one of her Thrones co-stars, Lena Headey, who played Sarah on TV in the Sarah Connor Chronicles series).  The weakest cast members, however, unfortunately would be the two Australian stars, Jason Clarke and Jai Courtney.  Courtney especially has been plagued by lackluster roles in action movies over the course of his career, although he is better served here than in the terrible A Good Day to Die Hard (2013).  His Kyle Reese is serviceable, but pales in comparison to Michael Biehn’s standout performance in the original.  Also, there is zero chemistry between the two leads here, which is something that defined the first Terminator so memorably.  Jason Clarke also gets the enviable role of John Connor, and does very little with it.  It’s a sadly passionless performance that displays none of the charisma that John is supposed to represent.  It makes you long for the likes of Christian Bale, who himself had a hard time with the role.  Hell, I would even prefer the ranting Christian Bale from the set of Terminator Salvation.  The movie also brings in quality actors like J.K. Simmons and Doctor Who’s Matt Smith and wastes their abilities on underdeveloped roles.  In the end, the movie makes a talented cast work hard for not much of a result, which is another disappointing aspect of this film.

So, how bad is this movie overall?  I wouldn’t go as far as to say it’s the worst action movie that I’ve ever seen.  Hell, it isn’t even the worst action movie of this year, or this summer.  It’s just kind of a “Meh” movie from beginning to end; unremarkable in every way possible.  Well, to be fair, any moment with Arnold Schwarzenegger is worth seeing, but there’s not much else of note to say about it.  The action scenes are bland, the CGI is horrendously overused and generic, and the characters are just pale imitations of what they once were in better movies.  As a standalone action flick, I guess it could serve it’s purpose, but unfortunately for Terminator: Genisys, it’s carrying the legacy of a once dominant franchise.  And instead of expanding on the universe, this movie instead chooses to just cover old ground and tell us a story that we already know, adding nothing to the mythos.  The vision that James Cameron created with his original movies is something worth exploring further, especially with all the new advances in technology that we’ve made in the years since; yet that’s not what we’re getting in the franchise today.  But, even still, this movie isn’t so bad that it casts a dark shadow on the series as a whole.  In the end, the first two Terminators still retain their classic status, and this new version is more or less on par with the last couple movies from the series.  Having  Arnold back certainly helps.  Overall, it’s just a sub-par entry into a franchise that has seen better days and should probably be put to rest soon, or at least re-freshened with new ideas.  As a diversion for this year’s Fourth of July weekend, I would recommend sticking with the fireworks, because you will find none with this Terminator.

Rating: 5.5/10

There’s few other movie companies with a track record like Pixar Studios.  Groundbreaking and consistently successful at the box office, Pixar has developed into a brand both admired and envied.  Parent company Disney certainly knew what they were doing when they acquired the studio back in 2005, but their partnership goes back long before even that.  Starting with the phenomenon that was Toy Story (1995), Pixar and Disney have continued their win streak for 20 years strong, winning multiple awards and continually breaking box office records in the animated category.  But, even with the hot streak that Pixar has had, it’s by no means a given that everything they touch turns to gold; although for a period in the mid aughts, it certainly looked like that was the case.  In recent years, Pixar has been showing some signs of weakness, at least in the quality of their storytelling (they have still dominated at the box office).  This was clearly evident with the lackluster Cars 2 (2011), the only film made by the studio that was panned by critics and the first instance where it looked like the studio was just lazy.  Hope was high with the follow-up Brave (2012), but sadly that film also disappointed; it was beautiful to look at but hollow and disingenuous as a story.  I enjoyed the film that followed, Monsters University (2013), but a lot of other fans did not as they’ve grown weary of too many sequels dominating the animated landscape.  And to compound the problem for Pixar, they’ve seen a lot more competition from other studios who have upped their game in recent years and are challenging them for dominance in the market; whether it’s rival Dreamworks (How to Train Your Dragon), upstart Illumination (Despicable Me) or Disney’s own in house animation department (Frozen).

So, with a lagging output from their own lineup of films and more competition from other studios, there’s more pressure on Pixar now than ever before to deliver something special.  I think part of what has been Pixar’s problem in recent years is that they’ve become a victim of their own success.  People’s expectations for the studio have become almost unfairly high, and their ability to exceed those expectations is becoming nearly impossible to meet.  But, at the same time, they’ve opened themselves up to disappointment from audiences by relying too heavily on familiarity in their stories.  They’ve always delivered stunningly beautiful animation, but what’s made Pixar different from everyone else has been their emphasis on story and characters.  The best of their movies also feel complete as stories too, making the experiences worthwhile.  But, if your movies lack cohesion and effort, then they feel incomplete or uninteresting.  Pixar seemed to be falling into this trap by delivering things that felt like retreads rather than original ideas.  Cars 2 and Monsters University told us nothing new about the worlds they depict, and Brave was just another fairy tale and nothing more.  It seems from this recent trend that Pixar was just following the market instead of driving it, which is very uncharacteristic for such a groundbreaking company.  Something new and fresh needed to shake things up to get the studio back on track and thankfully acclaimed Pixar director Pete Doctor (Monsters Inc., Up) has just the movie that they needed right now.  That movie is the remarkably original and endlessly intriguing Inside Out.

Inside Out is really unlike anything we’ve seen from Pixar or any animation studio before.  Part of the allure of this movie is the concept behind it, where the human mind is visualized as a fully realized world with different communities working together to form a person’s personality, and all of our key emotions are personified as individual characters.  But, for Pixar, it’s not just about the concept alone; it’s how they use it.  The story rolls out on two levels; one, it tells the story of a pre-teen girl named Riley (Kaitlyn Dias) as her family moves to the city of San Francisco, uprooting her into an unknown and challenging new life, and two it follows the lives of the different emotions inside her mind, who govern all the choices and memories that she makes in her life.  Chief among the emotions is Joy (Amy Poehler), and her team is made up of Disgust (Mindy Kaling), Fear (Bill Hader), Anger (Lewis Black), and the troublesome Sadness (Phyllis Smith).  Joy tries her best to keep Riley happy and positive throughout her life, but Sadness wants to help out more, which messes up much of Joy’s plans.  After the two come into conflict over one of Riley’s core memories (which is presented in the form of a glowing sphere), both Sadness and Joy are thrown out of the control room and into the far reaches of Riley’s subconscious mind, leaving only Disgust, Anger and Fear left to steer the ship.  With what seems like an endless expanse between them and home, both Joy and Sadness must overcome their differences in order to return themselves and Riley’s core memories back where they belong.  And the road back is about as complex and treacherous as you would expect the human mind to be.

It’s a pretty heady concept for a movie aimed at kids, but of course this is Pixar we’re talking about; the studio that caters to the child in all of us.  So, how does Inside Out fare against the rest of Pixar’s stable of films?  Pretty well actually.  In fact, I would easily put this in the Top 5 films that they have made.  This is another home run by the studio and is exactly the kind of movie that they needed to get them back on track.  From the very opening shot, showing Joy emerging out of the void to illicit the first squeal of laughter out of a newborn Riley, to the final hilarious montage during the credits, Inside Out is an absolute delight.  It does exactly what the greatest films from Pixar have always done which is take a great concept and make it work with a compelling story and incredible characters.  But, even more remarkable than that is how well they execute the underlying premise of the movie.  Visualizing the human mind as it’s own world is easy enough to comprehend on paper, but to actually make it work on film is another thing.  Making it comprehensible to younger kids is especially challenging, but the movie does a remarkable job of laying out exactly how this world works without ever spoon feeding needless exposition to it’s audience.  In fact, the wonder of this movie is seeing all the clever different ways it visualizes the inner workings of the mind; like having a train of thought appear as an actual train, or dreams being produced inside a movie studio (a literal dream factory as it were).  But, even with all the amazing visuals, Pixar still manages to find the heart at the center of this story and that’s what helps to make Inside Out as special as it is.

Like the best of Pixar’s output, story is paramount to it’s success.  At the heart of it, this story is about polar opposites working together and finding the value in one another.  Although Joy isn’t malicious in nature, she certainly isn’t perfect either, and much of the film’s conflict comes from her unwillingness to let Sadness be a crucial part of the team.  As the story goes along, we see an understanding build between the two, and Joy learns that you need sadness in life in order to appreciate the joy, something in which she had failed to see before.  Essentially, it’s about looking beyond differences just as much as it is about fighting your emotions and finding that right balance.  It also makes us look at complex ideas in a straight forward and entertaining way, which is what Pixar is best at.  Much like how Wall-E (2008) gave us a look at environmentalism, or how The Incredibles (2004) made us look at objectivism, Inside Out makes statements about human psychology and avoids ever trying to lecture to it’s audience.  Pixar has always let the stories carry themselves and statements about the larger world, whether pointed or not, have always seemed like a by product rather than the main focus of their movies.  It’s something that really sets them apart from other, less subtle filmmakers.  And best of all is that it doesn’t distract from the plot either.  Inside Out sticks firmly to it’s goal and that’s to entertain, whether it’s with huge laughs or with tear-inducing heartbreak.

Apart from the story, the other thing that audiences will absolutely love about this movie is the characters.  Each character is instantly recognizable and the look perfectly matches the emotion that they represent.  Disgust of course is green, with a perpetual sneering look of anguish on her face.  Purple hued Fear always looks hunched over like he’s about to roll up into a ball for protection.  Red hot Anger is a tiny ball of rage and literally is only seconds from firing up all the time.  And then we get the key characters of Joy and Sadness, perfectly off setting each other in bright yellow and deep blue.  Each character is distinctive and their personalities are all perfectly realized in their appearance.  The designs are also matched with perfectly cast voices as well.  Saturday Night Live alum Amy Poehler is the natural choice for Joy, as are Mindy Kaling (The Mindy Project) for Disgust and Bill Hader (SNL) for Fear.  Even more perfect is comedian Lewis Black as Anger, considering that his comedy act is famously built around his hilarious over-the-top rage, and there are some laugh out loud bits in the movie that exploit that perfectly.  The Office’s Phyllis Smith’s performance as Sadness however may be the strongest, as she makes the character both hilarious and heartbreaking at the same time, creating a very well rounded character.  Plus, her comedic timing and line delivery are some of the best parts of the movie.  But, the great character work isn’t just limited to the Emotions.  The human characters are also well done, especially the crucial character of Riley.  She may very well be the best animated human character that Pixar has done to date.  The subtlety of her animation is really astounding, and it makes those bizarre looking human models of Andy and Sid from Toy Story seem very primitive by comparison.  Indeed, these are characters that will absolutely earn their place among the likes of Woody, Buzz Lightyear, Dory, and all of Pixar’s other greatest characters.

Now, is Inside Out a perfect movie?  Not quite, but pretty close.  The one flaw I would say that the movie has is the pacing and familiarity of the plot.  Pixar seems to love stories about characters getting lost in an unfamiliar world and finding their true selves on the way home.  We’ve seen it in Toy Story (1995), Finding Nemo (2003), Wall-E (2008) and Up (2009), and the same kind of story plays out again here in Inside Out.  It’s an unfortunate retread of familiar ground, which has been Pixar’s weakness in recent years.  But the creativity put into the journey helps to make this a bit more acceptable this time around.  I for one didn’t mind seeing Pixar reuse this same type of plot, just as long as it did something fresh with it and added in a few surprises, which it does.  But, even still, there are times when you feel like the concept itself could have been explored differently; that way the end result would’ve felt a little more unexpected.  That would be the film’s only other fault; a very rushed and anti-climatic conclusion, though still with some heartfelt emotion present.  Overall, even with faults in some of the plot, the movie’s high points still dominate the overall experience.  As the story goes along, I forgave most of the faults just because the creativity was strong enough to make those things not matter as much.  At some points, I was also just surprised by some of the risks the movie takes.  Though the movie is light-hearted in tone, it’s also not afraid to go a little dark at some points, even to the point of tragedy.  I’m not going to spoil what happens for you, but there was a moment in this movie that actually brought the audience I saw this with to tears; even openly crying in some cases.  Think on the same level of Bambi’s Mom dying or the opening montage of Up, and that’s what this moment managed to accomplish.  Though sad, it thankfully doesn’t spoil the mood of the movie and actually it does help to enhance it.  After all, this is a story about Joy and Sadness working together, so naturally the movie’s plot should reflect that.  But, even still, be prepared to weep in between the many laughs throughout the film.

In many different ways, this is exactly the kind of movie that Pixar needed to reassert itself as the leader in the animation community, as well as in the film industry in general.  It’s got all the elements of a great Pixar movie, but it doesn’t rest on it’s laurels either.  It takes risks, but without alienating it’s audience.  I am relieved to see this powerhouse studio gain it’s mojo back with this one, and I’m sure that audiences will feel the same way.  It may be hard right now to see exactly how this one will line up against some of Pixar’s other classics, but I can certianly say for myself that it’s among their best efforts.  Wall-E is still my favorite overall, and some of the Toy Story‘s still resonate a little stronger, but Inside Out puts to shame most of the other recent output from the studio.  I only wish that the same care with the story and these characters could’ve been used in something as promising as Brave, which sorely lacks everything that this movie has.  Also, unlike other Pixar movies, which work best as self contained stories, I actually believe Inside Out would be well served with a sequel.  The movie feels like it’s only scratched the surface with this concept, and I would love to see the continuing adventures of these characters.  Who knows; maybe if the movie does well enough at the box office, that could certainly happen.  More than anything, this is almost certainly going to be one of the year’s best films, if not one of the most entertaining. As is almost always the case with Pixar, this will be a movie with timeless appeal that will indeed be enjoyed by audiences young and old for generations to come.  And that’s something that Pixar can absolutely be joyful about.

Rating: 9/10

The future is always unpredictable and most attempts to imagine it in a film usually come up short of matching reality.  Take for instance the dystopian future of Blade Runner (1982) which imagined an overgrown, trash-filled Los Angeles in the far distant year of 2019.  Four years out and Los Angeles, while still big and rough in parts, is not exactly a hell hole yet; and replicant beings like the ones in the movie are nowhere near a reality today.  Why even the optimistic future of Back to the Future Part II (1988) is way off, since it takes place in our current year of 2015 and we still don’t have flying cars.  Even still, pondering and imagining the future is something that has always appealed to filmmakers and it doesn’t stop many of them from making their best guesses.  Filmmaker Walt Disney took an even better approach to imagining the future in his many projects, by not looking towards the things that will be but rather the things that could be in the future.  As an avid futurist, Disney consulted with some of the greatest scientific and literary minds of the 20th century, such as Ray Bradbury and Werner von Braun, and used his expertise and clout as a filmmaker to help spread their ideas and inventions to the world in order for them to take hold in the public consciousness.  His Disneyland television program in particular showcased programs in what he called the Tomorrowland segments that educated the world about science and invention, while at the same remaining entertaining.  This would also eventually manifest itself into the Tomorrowland area found in Disney parks around the world.  The overall effect has both kept optimism about the future alive while also creating a sustaining fanciful concept of what we ourselves can make the future into.

This is an idea that has undoubtedly inspired other filmmakers who have carried on and contributed to the long Disney legacy.  One of those people is Brad Bird, a one-time animator at the Disney company who has since become an acclaimed writer/director in both animation and live action.  Already, he has ammassed an impressive filmography with The Iron Giant (1999), The Incredibles (2004), Ratatouille (2007), and his successful leap to live action with Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol (2011).  After this successful stretch, Bird could have taken on any project he wanted, and thankfully he set out to deliver something new and original in the live action medium; something that’s been severely lacking in Hollywood in recent years.  He returned to Disney with the idea born out of nostalgia for some of those old Tomorrowland episodes and his source of inspiration stemmed from something found deep in the Disney archives.  That artifact has been dubbed the “1952” Box.  Now, this is purely from the press released about the movie, which could have been fed from Disney’s marketing team, so whether or not this “1952” Box is real or not is uncertain.  But, even if it is, it’s still an interesting discovery, as many of it’s contents present many fantastical dreams about the future, consistent with Walt’s concept of Tomorrowland.  Some speculate that the box’s contents related to the projects that Walt Disney was working on for the 1964 New York World’s Fair, but Brad Bird saw a bit more of a story being told within that box.  And that idea has now panned out into the new film Tomorrowland, which is quite a curiosity not just as a Disney film, but as a work of science fiction in general.

The story follows a young, scientifically minded teenager named Casey Newton (Britt Robertson) who is troubled by the loss of the space program in her hometown of Cape Canaveral, Florida.  Her father (Tim McGraw), a former NASA engineer, tells her that this is the new reality of their lives and that it’s time to let it go, but she refuses give up on her dreams.  After getting caught sneaking into the launching pad facility at Cape Canaveral, she is released from jail only to find that she has a new pin in her possession.  When she touches it, it transports her into another realm; one that only she can see.  This new realm turns out to be the titular Tomorrowland, which is a place where all of mankind’s greatest minds can coexist and have their dreams become a reality.  Unfortunately for Casey, the open door closes on her just as quickly as it opened.  In order to find out what Tomorrowland is and where she can find it, she goes in search of others who know about her pin.  While on her way, she runs across some menacing characters who are hunting her down. They turn out to be robot soldiers, or Audio-Animatronics as they are referred to in the film.  She’s saved from the robots by a mysterious young girl named Athena (Raffey Cassidy) who helps to steer her towards another like-minded soul who has information on the whereabouts of Tomorrowland.  Soon, Casey finds Frank Walker (George Clooney) a former boy genius who has been to Tomorrowland and can help her get there.  The only problem is, he’s been kicked out Tomorrowland before and is now unwelcome.  But, with some motivation, the two make it and soon find that Tomorrowland is not what they hoped it was anymore and is under the rule of the pessimistic Governor Nix (Hugh Laurie).

There is a lot of interesting things that are going on in the movie and it has a message that is very much in line with the optimism of the future that the idea of Tomorrowland represents.  Essentially, what Brad Bird wants to say with this movie is that the future is what we make of it, and he wants to steer us towards looking for ways to make the world a better place with both creativity and curiosity.  One of the things that Bird laments in the film is how people are obsessing about the end of the world and the horrible things that are happening in the environment and political world without ever considering what they can do to change it.  In particular, he highlights the fact that Hollywood’s view of the future has moved away from scientific ingenuity and invention and has instead presented a pessimistic apocalyptic view where either the world’s been destroyed by war, alien invasion or by zombie epidemics.  The byproduct of this, Bird argues, is that fewer people are engaging in scientific curiosity anymore from the media, and that has led to a loss in scientific mindfulness and an increase in uneducated hysteria. This is certainly a very important message to get across, and one that I wish the movie had adhered to better.  Unfortunately, Tomorrowland doesn’t fulfill the promise that it set out to create.  There are great ideas here, but they are sadly undone by the very same conventions that it’s trying to criticize.  It’s a very schizophrenic movie at times, because from scene to scene, it can’t decide whether it wants to be an inspirational movie, or an action movie.  And that whiplash of tone often undermines the potential that it could have had.

I think this primarily is a problem with the script more than anything else.  Brad Bird worked on this screenplay with Lost co-creator Damon Lindelof, who is one of the more problematic writers working in Hollywood today.  Part of Lindelof’s problem is that he’s got the skills of a great writer, but with none of the restraint.  Sometimes he’ll have many great ideas (too many in some cases) but he can’t always coalesce them into a compelling and ultimately fulfilling narrative.  The most infuriating aspect of his writing is the way he keeps things vague and only teases his audience with the possibility that something extraordinary will happen, but ultimately never does.  Anyone who saw the last season of Lost knows what I’m talking about, and sadly Tomorrowland is built around the same template as all of Lindelof’s other scripts.  We are teased with all the wonders that we might see in the world of Tomorrowland, and the movie takes it’s time getting there, but once we finally arrive at Tomorrowland for real in the story, it’s a letdown because it doesn’t match what we dreamed it would be.  Maybe that’s part of the point, but it flies in the face of what Brad Bird wants us to feel with this movie.  What’s more, whenever the movie seems to find it’s footing, we are suddenly distracted by unnecessary cliches that derail the momentum in jarring ways.  This movie has a lot of explosions and gun-play for a film that’s also criticizing the overuse of them in modern flicks.  The villain, Governor Nix, also has a scene where he’s monologuing his whole sinister plan.  Didn’t Brad Bird destroy that cliche effectively in The Incredibles?

It seems to me that Lindelof is only at his best when he’s reigned in, by either a studio or by J.J. Abrams (and even he began to lose control near the end of Star Trek Into Darkness).  Unfortunately, Brad Bird doesn’t have that kind of control and he was probably too involved in the world building of this movie in order to address the flaws in the screenplay.  But, even with all the problems inherent, it doesn’t turn the entire thing into a disaster.  There are still a healthy amount of good things to like in this movie.  The best thing that Brad Bird has learned from his years in animation is to tell a story with visuals, and that goes a long way to help smooth over some of the movie’s more troublesome shortcomings.  The brief glimpses we get of Tomorrowland in all it’s glory are pretty spectacular.  Bird even showcases the entire place in a beautiful 5 minute long tracking shot, and you already know how much I like those.  He also manages to convey character traits without having to spell things out, either with costume ideas or clever clues from the character’s surroundings.  And while there are tonal inconsistencies throughout the movie, the individual scenes are still well paced and entertaining.  I especially liked the prologue which shows young Frank (Thomas Robinson) attending the 1964 World’s Fair in New York.  Not only does Brad Bird beautifully recreate this real historical event in great detail, including a surprise found in the “It’s a Small World” ride, but it also perfectly sets up the wonder that is Tomorrowland.  If only what followed had the same kind of wonder to it.

What does save most of the movie, however, is the cast itself.  While the roles aren’t specifically crafted for anyone in particular, it does seem perfect to have the key role of Frank Walker played by a star like George Clooney.  He perfectly captures the caricature of a once bright mind that’s been clouded by pessimism and he brings a lot of charm and depth to the character.  While, it’s not his film per se (it’s more about the character of Casey overall), Clooney still adds weight and prestige to this movie that might have otherwise have been too lightweight for it’s own good.  Britt Robertson, though a little too old to be playing a teenager, still carries the film well enough as Casey, and helps to make her likable, even despite the cliched “savior” role that she’s forced to play in this plot.  The best performance and character in the movie, however, belongs to Raffey Cassidy’s Athena.  Those mystical child characters you find in fanciful movies like this are sometimes hard to pull off and usually come off as insufferable.  Athena, however, is by far the best thing about this movie, and Ms. Cassidy brings a surprising amount of charm out of this difficult character.  I don’t want to give away too much, but there’s a lot of surprises revealed about Athena and she consistently improves the film in every scene she is in.  Given all the problems with the story, having a character like her present is a godsend, and one wishes that her story had been better explored.  The one weak point in the cast sadly would be Hugh Laurie as the villain.  Laurie is a reliably talented actor, and his performance here isn’t at all bad.  It’s just that Governor Nix is too much of a stock villain to be taken seriously.  In fact, he’s not even overtly evil enough to make us care about what he does in the film’s disappointing climax.  He’s just misguided, but with no real context to his character, so there’s no reason for us to fear him or understand him.   Still, it’s more the script’s problem, and not the actor’s, and he tries his best with what he has to work with.

I have to say, as both a Disney fan and as someone who wants to see movies that can inspire great minds to achieve great things again, I was saddened by how disappointing this movie was.  Believe me, I really wanted to love this movie; and I tried.  Tomorrowland could have taken us into a brave new world of science fantasy, and sadly it never gets even close to reaching it’s potential.  Maybe I expected too much, like seeing something that could end up being Stanley Kubrick meets Lewis Carroll, but Tomorrowland is far from Wonderland.  The movie sadly ends up falling into the same cliches that the filmmakers are also lamenting in their film, which makes the whole thing a tad bit hypocritical.  Part of the problem is with the uneven script, but the general problem with the movie is that it doesn’t seem to fully commit to anything either.  Tomorrowland as a place is only teased at, and the ideas (as good as they may be) are half-cooked and never fully explained.  Walt Disney used his Tomorrowland program to both educate as well as entertain.  Tomorrowland can entertain, but the education falls flat, which is a shame because it’s a lesson that needs to be taught.  But, as disappointed as I was, I can’t dismiss it either.  It’s still a beautifully crafted movie with some very strong performances by it’s cast.  Also, even though this may be Brad Bird’s least effective movie to date, there’s still a lot of creativity to behold.  Look for some of the clever Easter eggs throughout, like the hidden A113 that always appears somewhere in Bird’s movies, and also the the hidden Space Mountain that appears in the wide shots of Tomorrowland.  Though the movie is flawed, it’s also harmless too, and could be a fine source of entertainment for family audiences.  It especially works as a source of nostalgia for Disney fans, given it’s exploration into the company’s history with the scientific advances and explorations of the last 50 years.  I just wish that a more compelling story could have materialized out of all that dreaming.

Rating: 6.5/10

Nothing has been more miraculous in the last few years of cinema than the development and execution of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.  Not only has Marvel Comics successfully translated many of their properties to the big screen, but they’ve managed to also intertwine the whole of them into a continuing, larger narrative and sustain it for nearly a decade now.  It has been a tall order to make sure everything falls into place and to have the payoff be worth it in the end, but so far things have worked out for the best at Marvel.  Under the supervision of Marvel Studios head Kevin Feige and backed with the financial support of parent company Disney, the MCU gamble has turned into the envy of every other studio in Hollywood.  Now, everyone is trying to launch their own cinematic universe based around their own properties, including a Ghostbusters universe over at Sony and a Movie Monster universe at Universal.  Marvel rival DC Comics is also amping up their long dormant characters for a cinematic universe that they hope can capitalize on the same success that Marvel is experiencing.  But the reason for the success of the MCU is not just with the characters alone.  Extensive planning has helped to make the MCU grow and sustain itself, and this has largely been executed to perfection by building up the universe in Phases.  Each phase of Marvel’s master plan does two key things; one it establishes new characters to help populate the universe and let’s them live out their own stories, and two, it plants the elements within each story that will interconnect with the others at some point and ultimately tie each character together into one team.

Though each character’s story stands well on its own, Marvel’s ultimate plan is to have the inevitable team-up of characters, which happens in this Avengers series.  When the first phase of the MCU came to an end in 2012, with the release of the first Avengers, many people were skeptical that it could be pulled off.  For one thing, an ambitious team up like this had never been done before and putting all these larger than life characters together could have proved overwhelming. Not only that, but the duties of bringing the whole mess together was given over to Joss Whedon, a television producer who had never done a movie on this scale before.  But, as it turned out, Whedon was the best possible choice for the job. His years in television, making cult hits like Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Firefly, helped to refine his ability to balance multiple ongoing storylines and put them all together into one narrative. His Avengers pulled off the impossible, having all these monumental characters like Iron Man, Captain America, Thor, and the Hulk share screentime and still manage to get their shining moments in the spotlight.  The result was a monumental hit, becoming the 3rd highest grossing movie of all time (behind Avatar and Titanic) and it gave Marvel the confidence to move forward with Phase 2.  The second phase of course continued to do the same thing that Phase 1 had done; pressing ahead with the continuing storylines of each Avenger team member, while also establishing new characters, whether as a new sidekick (The Falcon in Captain America) or a whole other team entirely (Guardians of the Galaxy).   And now, three years later, Phase 2 is coming to a close with The Avengers once again assembling in the inevitable sequel; Age of Ultron.

Age of Ultron doesn’t pick up where the last one left off, for obvious reasons, but anyone who hasn’t kept up with the MCU won’t be lost either.  The movie immediately thrusts the audience into an action scene, with the Avengers teaming up to take down a base of operations for the sinister HYDRA organization.  Within their stronghold, the Avengers find artifacts collected from the alien invasion of the first movie, including the staff used by the first film’s villain, Loki.  When Iron Man, aka Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) researches the staff, he learns of its highly advanced data properties and sees a way he could use it to bring to life his Ultron program, which he envisions as a way of using artificial intelligence to program Iron Man drones across the world as a peaceful replacement for the Avengers.  The plan goes awry when Ultron (voiced by James Spader) comes to life on his own and decides that the best way to save the world is to destroy mankind.  After their base is attacked, Stark and the other Avengers, Captain America (Chris Evans), Thor (Chris Hemsworth), Black Widow (Scarlett Johanssen), Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner), and Bruce Banner, aka the Hulk (Mark Ruffalo), quickly scramble to follow Ultron and try to stay one step ahead of him.  Unfortunately for the Avengers, Ultron has also put together a team of super powered beings himself; the HYDRA enhanced twins, Quicksilver (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) and Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth Olsen).   With a super intelligent and powerful robot creating havoc across the world with two superhuman twins by his side, the Avengers are brought to the brink of their capabilities and even begin to doubt one another, especially when another wild card is brought into the mix in the form of the android hybrid, The Vision (Paul Bettany).

Just like the first Avengers, this movie is also a big gamble.  Not only must it live up to the lofty reputation of the original, but it has to tie in everything else that has happened in the Marvel Universe to date.  And given how complicated things have gotten in Phase 2, that’s easier said than done.  So, taking into account all of this, it’s actually quite amazing how well this movie works as it does.  One thing that Joss Whedon does exceptionally well is character interactions and building towards a climax, both of which are the highlights of this sequel.   There’s no shortage of witty banter between the characters (especially the one-liners delivered by Tony Stark), but there’s also a lot of clever nods and references to everything from other Marvel properties to even Archie comics and Disney’s Pinocchio (1940), something that’s a trademark of Whedon’s style.  He also manages to pay off a lot of loose threads from the Marvel cinematic universe and also plant the seeds for the future in a way that feels both rewarding and exciting. Essentially this is a movie made by fans of the comics for fans, and probably the only place where fan service is not only welcomed, but encouraged.  Even if it’s something that doesn’t have anything to do with the larger narrative, like the numerous cameos from secondary characters of the MCU (and yet another from Marvel Generalissimo Stan Lee), it’s still is a welcome inclusion that adds to the enjoyment of the whole.  But even with all that, the movie works well on its own as an action movie.  The film’s big set pieces are exciting without ever being flashy, which helps the audience keep track of what’s going on.  It runs the fine balance within the plausible impossible, where over-the-top things happen throughout, but never in a way that defies logic, at least in a comic book world.

But, even with all the great elements throughout, it’s not free of flaws either.  While still a worthy edition to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, I wouldn’t exactly consider it the best we’ve seen from Marvel to date either.  If anything, I’d say it achieves the goal of being a worthy follow-up to the first Avengers, and nothing more.  The most problematic thing about the movie, and what keeps it from being absolutely perfect, is the fact that it has way too much going on in it.  Essentially the plot is one long string of action sequences, with very few breaks in between.  Now, connected with all the other movies in the MCU, this relentless pace might make more sense, because it works as the climax for all of Phase 2.  But as a standalone movie, there’s not enough time for the plot to catch its breath and develop an identity for itself.  Some of the rich character history has to be sacrificed and plot arcs that usually take up entire acts are instead condensed into a single sequence.  The creation of Ultron is especially rushed in this movie, and he goes from gaining consciousness to enacting his sinister plan within a matter of moments.  Now, with a movie as packed as this one, you obviously have to cut down quite a bit to make everything fit, but one can’t help but feel that something also gets lost in the shuffle.  Also, the fact that so much has to be set up for future movies can also be a distraction, especially for those in the audience who have no connection to the comics whatsoever. The references to the Infinity Stones will almost surely please anyone who’s a fan of the comics, but any other casual viewer might come away from this film scratching their heads.

One thing that proves to be both the film’s strength and a problematic element is also the characterizations. When you’ve got a jam-packed cast like this, some character development is going to be lost. Hopefully most of you will have already seen the previous Captain America and Thor movies, because both characters are given almost no character development here.  And sad to say it Marvel, but Fox made a better and more entertaining Quicksilver than you in their movie X-Men: Days of Future Past from last year; despite a noble effort by actor Aaron Taylor-Johnson.  There’s also some shaky attempts to try to make up for lack of character development by throwing in a romantic plot thread in there for Black Widow and Bruce Banner, which is charming but doesn’t really fit into the plot. But what does save the movie from its shortcomings are the performances.  Everyone here is comfortable enough with the characters by now and that maturity helps in a long way to move the movie along.  Probably the character who benefits most in this sequel is Hawkeye, who actually gets a big boost in screentime.  Jeremy Renner’s grounded performance really helps to make his Hawkeye stand out from the rest, and his courage in the face of overwhelming odds helps to underline the mission of the team itself; something he even states in a perfectly delivered monologue late in the movie.  James Spader also brings in a lot of personality into the villain Ultron, and helps to save the underdeveloped character from being a disappointment overall, thanks to some very snarky wisecracks; although it does minimize the menace of the character, which is something of a negative.  Probably the best addition to the cast, however, is The Vision.  He comes into the movie late, but boy does he leave an impact, and Paul Bettany plays the character to perfection.

If there is anything that does get improved upon from the last Avengers, it would be the sense of scale.  The first film was exciting, but lacked any real visual punch, except maybe in the closing battle scene.  Here, the movie opens up and takes the Avengers on a globe-trotting adventure.  There are no longer any long stretches confined to a single location, like where half of the first movie was set on the S.H.I.E.L.D. Helicarrier.  The Avengers do battle in places as diverse as a cityscape in an African metropolitan city, the secluded woods of a fictional Eastern European nation, and even on a floating rock in the sky. Visually, it also looks like Joss Whedon has learned a few a lot more tricks since his first cinematic outing with these characters.  The original film was shot in the confining flat aspect ratio of 1.78:1, but here he shot the movie in the widescreen 2.40:1 ratio, which gives Whedon a wider canvas to work with.  The whole movie is all together more interesting to look at and shows that Whedon is no longer working in the mindset of how his project will look on television but instead is focused on making it look as epic as possible.  Though the process of getting from one scene to another is on shaky ground, each scene still is worth the wait and pays off in a big way.  One especially high point in the movie is the showdown between the Hulk and Iron Man wearing his Hulkbuster suit, and it’s a visual feast that lives up to the epic potential of that match-up. If there’s anything that Joss Whedon can be proud of with this film, it’s that it’s shows his maturity as a filmmaker and that he indeed can have a visionary style that can stand up beyond what he’s able to do on television.

So, even with all its shortcomings, Avengers: Age of Ultron is still a worthwhile film to see and a great way to start off this summer movie season.  Is it perfect?  No, but given all the complications and pressure put upon it, it’s still remarkable how well it does work in the end.  Sadly, the overwhelming success of the Marvel Cinematic Universe has raised the bar so high that it makes it nearly impossible to clear nowadays with every new entry.  Ultron may not be the best, but it comes close enough to that high bar to be worthy of the legacy.  I certainly was smiling throughout most of the movie, but part of that is because I’ve followed along with every Marvel movie to date, so I understood every inside reference and plot thread that relates to the larger universe.  Casual viewers may not understand it at all and wonder what all the fuss is about.  But even still, I doubt very few people are going to come away from this disappointed.  It’s still got all the great character interactions and action set pieces that define a great Marvel movie, and even a few pleasant surprises.  Not only that, but the spot on casting of the characters continues to pay off for this series, and it only makes me excited to see the team grow even more as Phase 3 gets started, leading us ultimately to the much anticipated two-part Infinity War.  It may not be Marvel’s crowning achievement to date (for me, that would be the more tightly plotted Guardians of the Galaxy), but still it’s worth the long wait. When the world’s mightiest heroes assemble together, how can anyone not want to see them in action.

Rating: 8.5/10

There has been a long history of movies centered around fast and powerful cars. Going back to the Rebel Without a Cause (1955) days, and following through to the heyday of the 1970’s with great vehicle chases in The French Connection (1971) and Bullitt (1968), audiences have always loved seeing big stars having fun in big cars. Specifically, cars have had a long association with depictions of masculinity on film, having the vehicles themselves work as an extension of the male characters strength and confidence, or perhaps an indicator of their insecurity depending on how much you read into it.  This has been especially true with many action film s in recent years, which has usually come to feature a car chase or two at some point in their running times. The resulting trend has been commonly referred to as the “dick flick,” which is a twist on the phrase associated with films that cater to the female demographic.  While “chick flicks” are mostly sweet natured and romantic, “dick flicks” tend to be aggressive and unsubtle, and like most other film types that cater to a specific audience, you get a few good entries as well as a whole lot of trash.  Just as “chick flicks” has its Bride Wars (2009), the “dick flick” has its Transformers (2007).  But, even with all the garbage out there, some audience pandering films do hit their mark and can even lift the genre as a whole for the better.  That has been true, for the most part, for the Fast and the Furious franchise, which has performed consistently well since its debut fourteen years ago in 2001. Though by no means one of the greatest franchises in history, the series has built momentum in recent installments which is unheard of for a long running franchise. And this year, it again reasserts its dominance as a franchise with its seventh entry, Furious 7.

The Fast and the Furious is not the kind of movie that you could see turning into a long lasting franchise.  It was entertaining alright, but not particularly groundbreaking. Still, it spawned a sequel, which underperformed and should of killed the franchise off but didn’t. A spinoff/sequel followed and then a reboot with the original cast came shortly after. It wasn’t until the fifth entry, Fast Five (2011) that the franchise started to find it’s mojo and become a megahit. That has continued through Fast & Furious 6 (2013) and now again with Furious 7, which I’m certain wil go on to huge box office numbers. It’s stamina for a franchise that is unheard of. Usually by the time a franchise is seven films in, it’s run out of fuel (pun intended). But, Fast and the Furious is thriving right now and that’s largely due to a reimagining of its basic premise and embracing the absurdity of the genre. The first couple films stuck mostly to genre norms and were about as basic as you could expect.  The last three films have dropped all logical expectations and have become increasingly over the top. Probably taking a cue from the James Bond franchise, which ironically itself is becoming more grounded, Fast and the Furious is embracing the absurdity of its premise and exploiting it for all its worth. And as a result, it’s made the franchise a lot more fun and less generic. The car chases are no longer the run of the mill kind of stuff; now they included machine guns, explosions and martial art smack downs.  But, even with all the extra bits added to the mix these last few entries, does this particular movie still work on it’s own.

The story pretty much picks up where the last one left off. Hot rod driving mercenaries Dominic Toretto (Vin Diesel) and Brian O’Connor (the late Paul Walker) are settling back into a normal existence after their ordeal in London from the sixth movie. O’Connor is trying to live a normal family life with his wife (Jordana Brewster) and son, while Dominic is helping his girlfriend Letty (Michelle Rodriguez) readjust to normal life after loosing her memory. Unfortunately, the problems of London have come home as they brother of Fast & Furious 6 villain Owen Shaw (Luke Evans), Deckard Shaw (Jason Statham), seeks revenge against Dominic and his crew. Government contact and Dominic’s ally Agent Hobbs (Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson) becomes the first victim, showing that Deckard is a menace that they need to take seriously. Meanwhile, Dominic and his team are recruited by high level CIA commander Mr. Nobody (Kurt Russell) to help rescue an expert hacker held hostage by Aftican warlord Jakande (Djimon Hounsou) who seeks to retrieve a highly prized hacking software called God’s Eye. What follows is a globe-trotting mission that of course involves the use of some amazing cars.  Along for the ride are the rest of Dominic’s team which includes tech expert Tej (Chris “Ludacris” Bridges), wisecracking Roman (Tyrese Gibson) as well as Letty, who slowly remembers her life with the team the further into the mission they go.

Truth be told, I have not seen every film in the franchise, so I don’t know exactly how to place this new film within the context of the series as a whole. I can only judge it based on it’s strengths as a standalone movie. I will say this, it was a vast improvement over the last Fast and the Furious movie I saw, which was the 2009 reboot Fast & Furious.  Sadly, I have not seen the last two movies, which I’ve heard are the best, though I’ve seen bits of those two which indicate to me the over-the-top direction that the franchise has taken. This film, however, was mostly a mixed bag. Was it bad?  Absolutely not.  But, it didn’t grab a hold of me either. For me, it was a lot of stop and go while watching the flick. Whenever it was in an action sequence, which are pretty spectacular, the movie was very enjoyable.  But all the plot and dialogue scenes in between dragged for me. It’s something that I still don’t think the franchise has managed to figure out, but then again, I’m only working with an incomplete knowledge of the franchise as a whole.  For this movie at least, the slow parts still felt really slow, and I was just left waiting for the action to start up again. Now, I know that this isn’t Shakespeare and that more of the focus is meant to be on the benchmark action sequences.  But at the same time, I want to be invested in the characters story, and here it’s just filler until the next action scene starts. There are way too many scenes of the characters all sitting around discussing what they are going to do and not enough character development that matters. Seriously, half of the movie is made up of the cast just sitting around in meetings. Character moments are brief and well appreciated, but when the movie allows for too much of its runtime dedicated to planning out each action scene, then it seriously drags down what could have otherwise have been a wall to wall great thriller.

But, I credit that more to a problem with the script than with the direction itself. The Fast and the Furious franchise has long been shepparded by film director Justin Lin, who is credited for having reimagined the series as the over-the-top, spy caper behemoth that it is now. But, Lin sits this one out possibly due to conflicting projects (he’s been tapped as J.J. Abrams replacement for the Star Trek franchise), and directorial duties have been given to horror filmmaker James Wan.   Wan is best known as the creator of the Saw franchise and has recently garnered critical praise for his horror hit The Conjuring (2013). Furious 7 marks his first foray into action movies and for the most part, he makes the transition well. There’s a lot of flashy direction in the action sequences, as well as in the few party sequences throughout the film, which feels right at place in this franchise. I’m especially impressed with his sense of scale, because many of the sequences show a great sense of awe-inspiring visuals that you don’t normally get from a first time action director. One particular sequence involves Diesel and Walker’s characters escaping a high rise building by speeding their car out the window and jumping it into the next building. It’s a spectacular sequence that really displays Wan’s abilities to keep the grandioseness and absurdity of the franchise in tact. I also like the fact that Wan holds the camera still when he needs to, and doesn’t try to show off his direction in some of the quieter scenes; something that a lot of young shaky camera-loving filmmakers unfortunately don’t often do. Even though the story falters, the direction still stays strong and I give parent studio Universal for handing the reins over to a director who could still deliver a solid film without shattering the foundations that the franchise was built on.

Another bright spot of the film is the cast. While most of their acting abilities are a mixed bag (because some are better actors than others), they all still remain likable and are worth following along. Vin Diesel once again proves to be a valuable presence, and it’s understandable because this franchise is his bread and butter.  Other returning cast members also offer some solid support, even if the script leaves them with some rather clunky dialogue. Dwayne Johnson is especially entertaining as Agent Hobbs, and he manages to go from being chill inducing intimidating one moment to enormously charming in the next with great ease. Also, wait until you see how he takes out a predator drone in this movie single handedly. Newcomers are also welcome as well, especially action movie icons Jason Statham and Kurt Russell. While Russell doesn’t have much to do in the movie, it still is a treat to see the one-time Snake Plissken pull out his gun and start taking shots at bad guys again. Even better is Statham, who makes a very effective villain here, even if he pops out of nowhere sometimes. His showdown with Diesel at the very end is especially worth the wait and is probably a fight that action movie fans have long waited for.  I also give the movie credit for making the cars characters themselves.  There’s a special bit of nostalgia in the movie when you see Diesel take his original “muscle car” out of the garage for “one last drive” in the film’s climatic scene.  Even more spectacular is what he ends up doing with the car in final showdown. While there’s lots to like about the action sequences on their own, the cast involved does their best to make the human element work as well as it can and indeed a veteran crew like this does deliver in the end.

But, what ultimately is going to set this movie apart from the rest of the franchise, and what is ultimately the movie’s greatest triumph was the way that it dealt with the passing of one of its key cast members. The tragic death of actor Paul Walker in a car accident happened in the middle of this movie’s production, leaving what would end up being his final film performance incomplete. But instead of cutting him out of the movie altogether, the filmmakers worked around the issue and actually gave Walker a respectful send off that’s worthy of his memory. Amazingly, they managed to include Walker in every sequence of the film with the help of body doubles (Walker’s own real-life brothers) as well as some pretty seamless CGI facial replacement. Honestly, I couldn’t tell which scenes included the real Paul Walker or his stand-ins; its that good.   And while this helps to complete the work that Walker started, the movie also does it in a respectful way, letting the character be an active contributor to the plot rather than be sidelined in a rewrite.  The finale, however, is where the filmmakers should be absolutely praised.  They send off the character as well as honor the actor in a beautifully done memorial scene. I won’t spoil it for you, but the last five minutes of this movie didn’t leave a dry eye in the theater. Something you never thought you’d see a Fast and the Furious ever do, but it absolutely happened. Sometimes it’s tricky to work around an actor’s performance after they’ve died during production, but this is one example of how to do it respectfully and with a lot of grace. And as a result, it is by far the best thing about this movie.

So, is Furious 7 something I’d recommend.  Only if you’re a fan of the franchise itself, of which there seems to be increasingly more of. I for one thought it was just okay. Though I do admire the work put into the spectacular action sequences, the overall plot was just too inconsistent for me to really love this film. That being said, as a representation of the “dick flick” genre, it certainly could have been a whole lot worse. I do like the goofiness that the franchise has seemed to embrace and the fact that the filmmakers actually made an effort to make the action scenes comprehendable.  Yes, there’s some sequences that have a very music video flashiness to them, but it’s supported by well executed and visually stable action and dialogue sequences as well. The movie also does a commendable job of honoring a fallen comrade with a touching tribute, which could have been clumsily handled in the wrong hands. Overall, this won’t be a stumbling block for the increasingly popular Fast and the Furious franchise.  In fact, it could even be their biggest hit yet. But, I’ll have to watch all the movies together in order to see where it places in the franchise as a whole. As a standalone flick, it was amusing but unspectacular. If you love these movies, then I’m sure you’ll love this one too. In the end, it’s harmless entertainment that leaves audiences happy instead of assaulted with crude imagery and gratuitous action. And that’s a good a good mark to leave behind in this genre.

Rating: 6.5/10