"Incredibles 2" Review

Pixar's sixth release, 2004's The Incredibles, was their last unqualified great movie. They followed it with the massive stumble that was Cars and their subsequent output has wildly varied in quality from uneven (Up, Ratatouille, WALL-E), overrated (Inside Out, Toy Story 3) to downright mediocre, unnecessary and awful (Cars sequels, Finding Dory, The Good Dinosaur, Monsters University). For some reason Pixar has lost its way in telling focused, coherent stories - I blame the tragic passing of story guy Joe Ranft in 2005 (note the date) which gutted their story sense - and this inability to focus ultimately turns Incredibles 2 into a case of "We waited 14 years for this?"

Picking up literally where the first movie ended with the Underminer's appearance, we witness the Parr family unsuccessfully attempt to thwart his bank heist and minimize destruction. While things would've been much worse without their intervention, it only reinforces the opinions that led to Supers being outlawed in the first place. Even worse, the debacle leads to the government department of Super Relocation to be shut down, meaning the Parrs, whose house was destroyed in the climax of the first film, only have two weeks left in the motel before they're on the street.

Fortunately, benefactors appear in the form of Winston and Evelyn Deavor (voiced by Bob Odenkirk in full Saul Goodman mode and Catherine Keener), siblings whose DEVTECH company they inherited from their deceased parents. She's the Steve Wozniak tech genius and he's the Steve Jobs salesman who has a scheme to bring Supers back to respectability by putting Elastigirl (Holly Hunter) out front in a campaign to restore respectability. This bruises Mr. Incredible's (Craig T. Nelson) macho ego, but he's got too long a track record of collateral damage in his heroics, so he's benched with Mr. Mom duty, watching the kids, including the multi-powered Jack-Jack, in a big Sixties Space Age-styled mansion loaned by the Deavors.

With Helen out of town on her mission tracking a villain named the Screenslaver, who can hypnotize people with a pattern on any display screen, the movie wanders from Bob bumbling as a caretaker (because men, amirite?), daughter Violet's (Sarah Vowell) boy troubles caused by her date's mind being erased Men In Black style, Dash's (Huck Milner) problems with new math, Jack-Jack's random power set, a new bunch of Supers recruited by the Deavors, and so forth.

Though only a few minutes longer than its predecessor, Incredibles 2 feels simultaneously padded out and overstuffed. I saw a review that described it as feeling like a compilation of plots from an Incredibles TV series and that's spot on. The disjointed story problems appear from the very first moment as we're introduced to the mind-wiped boy scene, then jumping back to the Underminer battle followed by the family being cut loose by the government and Bob's mentioning he may've seen Violet unmasked. Why not just have the mind-wipe scene after the boy is mentioned? It wouldn't change how subsequent details play out. When the inevitable twist appears, it's such a non-surprise as to be surprising how weak the reveal is and how little sense the Screenslaver's plan makes.

Equally problematic is the decision to make Bob a passive bystander to what's happening. In the first movie, he and Frozone (Samuel L. Jackson) were sneaking out and listening to the police scanner for action. When recruited by Syndrome's assistant, he snuck off behind Helen's back to get a new supersuit and to get back into shape. Even though the events of this movie are only days after the first one's, he's got none of the old mojo and rapidly devolves into a sleep-deprived, emasculated mess. Frozone barely factors much either.

Brad Bird's track record took a savage bruising with the shockingly cynical flop Tomorrowland and one can't help wonder if the damage of that experience combined with being forced to slink back to sequelize so long afterwards - though it was 11, 12 and 13 years respectively between Monsters, Toy Story and Finding Nemo sequels - on top of Bird being 46 then and 60 now has led to the lackluster consistency of Incredibles 2.

On the plus side, the rendering of CGI has made the requisite leaps forward, the action scenes are all crisp and dynamic with great uses of power and the Jack-Jack stuff is a hoot, particularly his initial faceoff with a raccoon (really!), though anyone who saw the Jack-Jack Attack short on the first Incredibles DVD will experience deja vu.

Despite suspicions, I don't think the disappointing Incredibles 2 is as much a matter of Disney's alleged demands for social justice agendas to be inserted, but more like Bird's uninspired storytelling, muddled themes, and Pixar's general slumping into a lazy sequel factory. Joe Ranft, oh how we miss you!

Score: 6/10. Rent the Blu-ray.

"Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story" Review

Most people these days only know Hedy Lamarr from the running gag involving Harvey Korman's Hedley Lamarr in Blazing Saddles. I knew her because a stunning vector drawing of her graced the cover of my CorelDraw 8 package in the late-1990s:



As a nerd, I was also aware of an even less-known fact about her: She was an inventor who came up with the underlying technology upon which most of modern wireless stuff like Bluetooth and Wi-Fi rests.

Her career as a Hollywood starlet, her tinkering endeavors, and generally sad life (she married six times, never seemingly happy) is recapped in Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story, currently on Netflix. It traces her life as a precocious teenager born Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler in Austria - the scandalous film Ecstasy, which featured her nude, followed her everywhere - to her coming to America ahead of WWII, her struggles being taken seriously due to being a stunning beauty (she's hot by modern standards) and eventually her invention during the war effort for which she was denied a fortune in royalties and struggled for money in her later years.

Interviews with her children and film historians are augmented by a 1990 phone interview she'd done at age 75 that had been forgotten for a quarter century. Remarkably candid, she doesn't blame anyone in particular for how her life went and it's to the filmmakers credit that they don't focus on the obvious sexism which probably lurked behind her inventions not being taken seriously. (Admit it, though: If someone like Nina Dobrev showed up today at the Pentagon with some radical weapon idea she'd invented with an avant garde musician - as Lamarr had - no one would take her seriously either.)

While it feels a bit elongated and sketchy at 90 minutes - it should've been a tight 60 minutes - it's still an interesting portrait of a woman whose legacy in science turned out to be more enduring than her time on the screen.

Score: 7/10. Catch it on cable. (Netflix has it now.)

"Ocean's 8" Review

An overheated topic in movies these days is the gender flip - retelling old stories with female casts (never replacing women with men, mind you) - which has piled culture war drama on top of the underlying creative laziness of Hollywood. While trying to appeal to the female audience with traditional boys movies has a reasonable business rationale, it has come with some nasty militant feminists undertones of "men need to learn that they are inferior and to be erased" and reflexive attacks upon anyone not toeing the PC line that these flipped movies are just wonderful, ascribing sexist and racist attitudes to the critics in the attempt to inoculate bad movies from criticism.

2016's Lady Ghostbusters debacle was a prime example as the film's trailers hinted at the impending disaster to come and rather than power through, the filmmakers and media enablers decided to attack the audience as sexist trolls who hate women and are just toxic masculinity patriarchy manbabies blah-blah-woof-woof. It's not that previously successful and talented actors and filmmakers made a bad movie; no, the audience was WRONG and must be punished for their refusal to appreciate the Empress's new dresses. The past months' rage over Star Wars: The Last Jedi where Star Wars fans have been deemed "toxic" and in need of purging have only further poisoned the atmosphere.

So into this fraught environment comes Ocean's 8, an all-female spinoff of the George Clooney-topped Ocean's 11-13 series helmed by Steven Soderbergh which came out in 2001, 2004, and 2007, respectively. Considering the movie started shooting in late-2016, it's been in the works long before the culture war was joined in earnest, so it's safer to presume that this was just a chance to see if gathering a bunch of likeable stars to engage in breezy capering and for the most part it delivers just enough on basic expectations to make it worthwhile.

Sandra Bullock stars as Debbie Ocean, Danny's sister, who opens the film being paroled from prison after nearly a six year stint after pledging to the parole board that she just wants to have a quiet normal life, work a job, pay her taxes. Right. In actuality she has been plotting a massive jewel heist in the form of a Cartier necklace with $150 million and in order to pull off her ridiculously convoluted plan, she has to recruit some old pals: Cate Blanchett (the sidekick/talent wrangler), Sarah Paulson (the fence whose suburban family thinks she's eBaying all the stuff in the garage), Mindy Kaling (jewlry expert), Rihanna (stoner hacker), Awkwafina (pickpocket), Helena Bonham Carter (washed-up fashion designer) tasked with dressing the mule and inadvertent #8 in the scheme, Anne Hathaway as a ditzy actress.

If there is a basic problem with Ocean's 8 it's that everything goes too smoothly and there is no obvious nemesis like Andy Garcia and Al Pacino served as in the Clooney-Pitt-Damon movies. A fellow with whom Bullock has a legitimate beef with is a secondary target in her scheme, but his being looped in requires the same stratospheric suspension of disbelief every other detail in the plot requires, if not more. EVERYTHING goes according to plan with every single player able to get to the precise position they need to be. There is a clairvoyant ability to know exactly where and how people will react and the few minor hiccups that occur are resolved in a manner that's super easy, barely an inconvenience.

Everyone performs well enough considering their sketchy characters, though Bullock seems too restrained and dour. Blanchett is clearly having a blast as she did in Thor Ragnarok, but the MVP is Hathaway who deftly does ditzy though ultimately turns out not as dumb as expected. Hey, if Clooney et al can get paid for sliding through a heist film, why not let the ladies have some?

There's a weirdly tacked-on feeling third (or fourth) act which I suppose was supposed to add some tension, but turns out to be almost another part of the plan based on the investigator's (James Corden) past encounters with the Ocean family, but by then we're in the outro portion of the film and who cares?

While inconsequential to the max and too slick for its own good at times, Ocean's 8 delivers fully on its modest expectations as long as you don't think too hard about it. If you like the cast, you'll like the movie, but it won't change your life.

Score: 6/10. Catch it on cable.

"Death Wish (2018)" Review

High on the list of examples of remakes/reboots/reimaginings no one really needed is this remake of the notorious 1974 Charles Bronson vehicle Death Wish. The original tapped into the very real nightmare of Seventies New York City - Taxi Driver is almost a documentary of what the city was like before Giuliani cleaned up the place -  and vigilantism seemed almost necessary to fight back the tide of crime and predators. But that was then and this is not then and 2018's Death Wish relocates the story from Manhattan to the Murder Capital of America, but does so in an uncompelling and illogical manner.

Bruce Willis stars as a Chicago ER surgeon married to Elisabeth Shue with a spunky daughter (Camila Morrone). Life is wonderful until a valet decides to snap a photo of their SUV's GPS system to get their home address because reasons, namely to send three masked thugs to the home to rob the place while wife and kid are there alone. Mom ends up dead and daughter ends up in a coma. Frustrated by the lack of progress in the case, Willis picks up a gun that conveniently falls out of a patient's clothes in the ER, trains himself to shoot, and then becomes the "Grim Reaper", a vigilante that captures the public's imagination. As the trailer and obviousness give away, he eventually hunts down the killers. The end.

While I loves me some good man-on-a-mission-to-kill-everyone-between-him-and-someone revenge flicks like the John Wick series and Denzel Washington's Man On Fire (haven't seen the new Equalizer movies yet), Death Wish simply doesn't have any energy to it, primarily due to yet another lazy, smirky performance from the clearly-hating-his-job-and-needing-to-retire Willis. He simply doesn't deliver the angst and rage someone in his position would be feeling. I couldn't help but look at Vincent D'onofrio, playing his slightly loserish brother, and imagine how he'd spark up the role properly.

I normally hate when critics review the movie they wish they'd seen instead of what was on the screen, but I'm making the exception to call out the basic setup of this movie. It just strains credibility that burglars would be conducting a home invasion and despite one goon creeping on the daughter, not explicitly sexually assaulting her. With the Chicago setting, wouldn't a more relevant version have focused on a lower or middle-class black family beset upon by the very real predators that have made the Windy City the current Murder City and the father's quest for justice in an environment where "no snitching" enables the criminals who terrorize everyone? (While Denzel is busy with his own murderthon franchise, there are plenty of other compelling options like Sterling K. Brown.)


Score: 3/10. Skip it.

"Thoroughbreds" Review

To get a feel for why a lot of people disbelieve movie critics, take a look at the quotes in the poster above. I know Heathers and American Psycho quite well and I also know wickedly funny and Thoroughbreds is none of the above. Oh, the trailer below is typical false advertising as well, implying a much more crackling movie.

Former besties Amanda (Olivia Cooke, she was Artemus in Ready Player One) and Lily (Anya Taylor-Joy, she was the final girl in Split) are reunited under odd circumstances when the latter is hired to tutor the former in the mansion Lily lives in with her mother and a-hole stepfather. It takes some time to get enough crumbs to start assembling the cookie of these girls' pasts, but we eventually learn that Amanda is an emotionless sociopath who killed her horse in a botched attempt of euthanization and Lily was expelled from her previous elite private school for plagiarism.

As they drift along in what the movie imagines to be artsy hip storytelling, the focus settles on Lily's desire to kill her a-hole stepdad who, other than being a pretentious self-centered jerk, doesn't seem to be in dire need of offing. He's not physically beating her mother or putting the creepy moves on his cherry bomb step-daughter. His capital crime seems to be using the rowing machine too often. Yes, the travails of upper-crust youth these days.

They attempt to contract out the hit to a small-time drug dealer (Anton Yelchin in his final performance; he died two weeks after the film wrapped), but stuff nonsense hijinks TWISTY ENDING yawn.

The original stage play intentions of writer-director Cory Finley's thin script come through despite the slick ivory cinematography of Lyle Vincent. There is nothing relatable about the leads despite OK performances. They're a pair of pampered teens with rich white people problems which aren't really problems. (That they don't even bother mixing in boy troubles or some obligatory teen lesbian hints really shows how empty things are.)

I don't know where the ludicrous idea entered the heads of the critics who gave Thoroughbreds an 86% RT score came from - probably next door to where It Follows 95% score came from - but perhaps they should be put down for being lame as well.

Score: 3/10. Skip it.

Oscars 2018 Livesnark

Another year, another wasted Sunday night as the Virtual Signalling Olympics for movie stars were a thing and I was on the case via my @DirkBelig Twitter account. Now for your dining and dancing pleasure here's what I had to say:

• Sigh....here we go. Another year of the circle-jerking, virtue-signaling, Festival of Hypocrisy bka the #Oscars as gazillionaires lecture us about income inequality and demand serf disarmament, then wanting us to see Murderdeathkill 3 at theaters this weekend.
• First orange flag (signifying Hollyweird's desire that #2A be repealed for the Normals, while they have private armed security because shut up) spotted on Lin-Manuel Miranda, famous for his musical about a Founding Father who wanted the People armed against his ilk. #Oscars
• Only took a whole two minutes for the first of surely many, many cheap shots at Trump at the #Oscars. So edgy. Really going on on a limb, Jimmy.
  
  Looks like they're broadcasting from inside of Elizabeth Taylor's jewelry box.
• 63 million people are being punched in the face repeatedly by Jimmy Kimmel's #Oscars monologue. Show business is the only business that believes insulting the PAYING customers to preen for their elite pals has no downside. Idiots.
  
  Helen Mirren as Price Is Right model.  :)
• Best Supporting Actor goes to Sam Rockwell. I would've voted for Richard Jenkins, but this is fine. (That Armie Hammer wasn't nominated is nuts.) Fun speech. #Oscars
• MOI (about Gal Gadot): That's a nice dress.
  
  MISSUS: She could wear a paper bag and look good.
  
  MOI: This is true.
  
  MISSUS: So could [Armie Hammer] for that matter. #Oscars
• Eva Marie Saint is 93. Wowsers. She's in better shape, looks and cognitively, than Lindsay Lohan.
  
  Best Costume Design goes to Phantom Thread. This is correct. #Oscars
• Kimmel is all-in on being as negative and divisive as possible hosting the #Oscars. Not funny, not entertaining; nope, just furiously showing off for his fellow elites. Can't wait to see the ratings for this mess.
  
  Icarus wins Best Documentary Feature. Haven't seen this yet.
•  Whomever is cutting these #Oscars montages deserves some acclaim. The stage is pretty classy, too.
  
  Best Sound Editing goes to Dunkirk. [shrug]
•  The Dee Rees (who should've been nominated instead of Greta Gerwig for Best Director) Walmart-#Oscars advert was cute and an instant "give her a comic book movie" moment, but note the lack of a father because SocJus demands men be erased.
• Irony is sending out two actors who LEGALLY immigrated to America to lecture the Normals watching the #Oscars that they need to STFU about the invaders among them.
  
  Best Production Design is The Shape of Water. Acceptable choice.
  
  What is up with that guy's sleeves?
• Was there a sale at Too Small Velvet Jacket Warehouse? Must have been judging from the #Oscars suits the menfolk are wearing.
  
  Best Supporting Actress goes to Allison Janney to the surprise of no one. (I would've voted for her, too.) Nice speech opener and long w/o notes.
• St. Vincent = HAWT! #Oscars
• Surprise win for Blade Runner 2049 for Best Visual Effects #Oscars. Tough category where all were legit contenders, but I would've ranked it fifth. Would probably have voted for War for the Planet of the Apes.
•  Best Editing goes to Dunkirk. Spare me. The movie was pure confusion narratively. Baby Driver would've been my vote. Not sure why The Florida Project wasn't nominated here. #Oscars
• It would be wonderful if the audience they're about to surprise on the #Oscars was filled with people who just got out of prison a few days ago.
  
  Note that most of the stars participating are those in blockbuster movies who know hating the fans is bad business.
•  Just realized that the black #Oscars envelopes with YUGE gold type are probably to make it really, really, REALLY difficult to hand the presenters the wrong category undetected since they're visible from the lobby. Or orbit.
• Common - who won an Oscar for the dastardly "hands up, don't shoot" lie - is back with more agitprop. At least this year he's highly unlikely to be rewarded for these antics. Oh, look, all the white liberals are standing up as ordered at the #Oscars
• Unlike the Golden Globes, the #Oscars are paying some lip service to all the raping that went on with the silence and complicity of half of that crowd. No sign of Rose McGowan, though. No love for #rosearmy
• Best Adapted Screenplay goes to to Call Me By Your Name checking off the pink box with a career win for a long-lived veteran. (I would've voted for Mudbound, then The Disaster Artist.)
  
  Best Original goes to Get Out, which was my vote. Watch it twice to appreciate the skill.
• FINALLY!!! Roger Deakins wins Best Cinematography! Darkest Hour, Mudbound and The Shape of Water were all very nice, but Blade Runner 2049 was good and this bloke has been overlooked by the #Oscars for too long. Huzzah!
• And for the 38th straight year the Academy fails to use Jim Carroll's "People Who Died" for the #Oscars people who died segment. FAIL!!! So who will be the biggest snubs/overlooks this year?
•  Best Director goes to Guillermo del Toro for Grinding Nemo, which I'd be cool with if it hadn't been damaged by his usual slide into graphic violence & sex when it's simply not necessary. His movies are always lovely, but never quite gel. Would've voted for Jordan Peele. #Oscars
• Best Actor goes to Gary Oldman. When I saw the first trailer for Darkest Hour, I said it should've been title "Gary Oldman's Getting An Oscar This Year, Dammit!" and it is well-deserved.
  
  From Sid Vicious to Zorg to Churchill. All together now: EVERYONE!!!! #Oscars
• Best Actress goes to Frances McDormand to the surprise of no one. Didn't care for Three Billboards because it rang false over and over as there were no repercussions, but she was good and I support this win. Terrible dress. Obnoxious speech. Finance quality. #Oscars
• Best Picture is Grinding Nemo, aka Amélie F*cks The Creature From The Black Lagoon. BZZZZTT!!! The correct answer was Get Out or Darkest Hour.
  
  Quick, name GdT's last film? Nope, not Pacific Rim, it was Crimson Peak. Really.
  
  I didn't care for most of this year's #Oscars films.

"Black Panther" Review

Marvel continues its just-can't lose streak to 18-0 (I don't count the weaker entries like The Incredible Hulk or the first two Thor movies as losses; just not home runs) with Black Panther, a quite good movie which unfortunately has been hijacked by SJWs seeking to politicize everything.

Introduced in Captain America: Civil War, Chadwick Boseman continues his journey as T'Challa, who became King of the fictional African nation of Wakanda after his father, T'Chaka, was assassinated, also inheriting the mantle of the Black Panther, protector of the nation, clad in a vibranium - the mythical metal that makes Captain America's shield - cat suit. As explained in a prologue reminiscent of the storybook expository scene in Wonder Woman, a vibranium meteor landed on Africa and the metal's properties fueled Wankanda's rise as a technologically-advanced Utopia, which they have hidden from the outside worth with a shielding dome, cut off from the outside world.

The debate of Wakanda's place in the world and how it could help poorer African nations is forced when an American ex-SEAL, Erik Killmonger (a malevolent Michael B. Jordan), arrives and challenges T'Challa's claim to the throne. He wants to use Wakanda's tech and weapons to basically topple all the nations he feels are holding the African diaspora down and if you think that sounds a little (OK, a LOT) like a race war, I'm touching my nose. But we'll deal with the politics in a moment.

What's remarkable about Black Panther is how little like a Marvel Cinematic Universe movie it is. Other than Martin Freeman's CIA agent character also introduced in Civil War and Andy Serkis' Ulysses Klaue first/last seen in Avengers: Age of Ultron getting his arm cut off (the replacement is literally a blast, along with Serkis' no-CGI-covering-him performance), there are no hints of the Avengers, no drop-bys from Tony Stark. Instead it feels like a Shakespearean family tragedy with the ancient, deeply African tribalism and customs rubbing against the questions of how should a 22nd Century superpower masquerading as a poor 19th Century agrarian land interact with the 21st Century world.

With the usually overqualified casting (two Oscar winners, two Oscar nominees, and everyone else is excellent) that typifies Marvel's serious approach to funny book flicks, there is a weight to Black Panther that seems more like Christopher Nolan's Dark Knight movies than the recent laugh-a-minute Thor Ragnarok. Not that there aren't laughs or it's grimdark like the DC Murderverse slogs, but it's got a lot on it's mind, though more is implied than explicated; it really would've benefited from a tad more breathing room to debate its concept instead of just getting to the final climatic boss battles.

It's not a flawless masterpiece, however. Some of the CGI is surprising subpar and rubbery physics make fights look more like videogames or the Sam Raimi Spider-Man movies. The performance are so solid (though Jordan's street-level American jars compared to the mellifluous African patois of the others) that you don't realize until later we could've stood for more details, especially about Lupita Nyong'o's spy life and Danai Gurira's badass general. Letitia Wright's Shuri, T'Challa's super-brainiac little sister, feels too young for her precociousness - and are there no other scientists or doctors working with her? - and she gets a couple of ignorant racist comments stuffed in her mouth.

Which leads to the part we really shouldn't have to discuss, the inevitable co-option and politicization of yet another piece of entertainment by forces seeking to keep resentment, grievance, division and polarization whipped up in order to advance their agendas. Just a couple months after Star Wars: The Last Jedi was buried in vapid "think pieces" bashing the male characters, screeching "girl power" and proclaiming "diversity" (read: "less white men, yay!"), we're now assaulted by Time magazine covers and a tsunami of commentary about how landmark it is for a black-led superhero movie is in the Era of Trump as if the Blade movies didn't happen 20 years ago and Will Smith wasn't the Biggest Movie Star In The World before passing his crown to Dwayne Johnson.

It's depressing to see a narrative of "black people are finally getting something in AmeriKKKa" being fomented when if that was the case, no one would be making a reportedly $200M budget film with a 98% black cast, black writers, designers and director, female cinematographer (who's white, but she's a lesbian, so her victim class card is punched, twice) which is on track to make over $200M in its opening weekend. Focusing on the skin color, genitalia and sexual behavior of the filmmakers is insulting, not empowering. Unless they're studying the IMDB, audiences doesn't know or care whether the crew behind the camera are black, white, straight, gay, male, female or a left-handed Amish panda with a limp, just whether the movie is good or bad. That the faces are different is just a footnote to anyone not obsessed with scorekeeping.

Black Panther's existence and success moots the premise of those seeking division over what should be another opportunity for ALL people to commune with escapist entertainment which also has thematic gravitas. What's ultimately ironic about the grievance mongers who share Killmonger's rage is that they seem to miss the fact he's the villain and his internalizing of victimhood is what leads to his inevitable downfall. It's T'Challa's pragmatic peace-seeking that is considered the ideal which leads to victory and peace.

So try and tune out the noise and just enjoy another excellent offering from Marvel. As an added bonus, we're not going to have to wait 2-3 years for more of the Wakanda folks; they're going to be back in Avengers: Infinity War in just three months. Can't wait.

Score: 8.75/10. Catch a matinee.

"Collide" Blu-ray Review

I needed a second title in order to get the 2/$5 deal at Family Video and with zero desire to own Assassin's Creed or several other lame flicks and my buddy not wanting anything, I decided to get Collide based off the Blu-ray.com review which said it wasn't original, but it was well done. The alternative was to spend an extra 50 cents and just buy the other title alone.

Thinking now I should've spent the 50 cents and saved the other $2 and 100 minutes of time.

Slick-looking with some impressive car crashes, Collide is a forgettable trifle about a pair of ex-pat Americans played by Nicholas Hoult and Felicity Jones (because there were no American actors available it appears) in Cologne, Germany. He left behind one-too-many stolen cars in America and we never really know why she's there. He's been driving for Ben Kingsley's drug trafficker - something she appears familiar with already - and she won't date that kind of guy, so he quits the life in order to get all up in her business and we're treated to a montage of them being pretty and in love. And they lived happily ever af....[record scratch SFX]

Nope! She's got failing kidneys that she neglected to mention to him during all the kissy times and as a foreigner of unspecified "status" in Germany, ineligible for that sweet socialized medicine or something. In order to get the cash needed to pay for her transplant, Hoult returns to Kingsley's service to execute a heist of a truck full of either money or drugs (they never made clear which phase of the operation they were hitting) being run by Kingsley's master, the outwardly-appearing totally legit Anthony Hopkins. Of course everything goes wrong (or does it?) and Hoult is on the run and Jones is Pauline being imperiled and so on. Vroom vroom ensues.

Collide is one of those utterly forgettable films which clearly took a lot of care to make yet leaves no impression. It's not that the beats are cribbed from a half-dozen other heist/caper/chase/whatever flicks but that it all feels so inconsequential. Hoult and Jones are pretty and chipper, but Hopkins has this look behind his eyes that he's slumming for the check like so many other former Oscar winners like Nicholas Cage and Robert De Niro have. Kingsley, on the other hand, is having a hammy blast as the Turkish gangster with the golden gun and weird sunglasses he never takes off; he may be slumming, but he's reveling.

The Blu-ray's transfer is clean and colorful and the DTS-Master HD audio track will seriously boom your room with LFE effects, though I had to keep riding the volume between the talking and the chasing. So annoying. There are no extras other than other trailers.

If it wasn't so inconsequential, Collide could've provided some mindless rainy day it's on cable fare, but it just doesn't hit as well as it could have.

Score: 3/10. Skip it.

"Blade Runner: The Final Cut" Blu-ray Review

Six years after my original review - and only 25 months before the events depicted were to have occurred! - my questions about how off the mark the futurists were about 2019 remain valid.

Score: 10/10. Buy it!

"Who the F*ck is That Guy? The Fabulous Journey of Michael Alago" Review

Stumbled over this on Netflix. Who the F*ck is That Guy? The Fabulous Journey of Michael Alago is the oral history of Michael Alago, a poor gay Puerto Rican kid who lived in the Hasidic Jewish area of Brooklyn and parlayed his time as a club kid in 1970s New York City into influential booking gigs and eventually a career in A&R where notable signings included Metallica and White Zombie. He eventually befriended and guided Nina Simone's final album.

With tons of photos and testimonials from musicians from the bands he signed and championed, plus some odd inclusions like Cyndi Lauper and John Lydon, it's brisk and entertaining, but probably mostly of interest to music industry junkies who actually care about managers and promoters as much as the talent they push.

While the seeming incongruity of such a flamboyantly out person like Alago working with bands in a genre with a reputation of not being particularly friendly towards practitioners of that lifestyle is discussed, it's not belabored. There are the usual late-film detours into the downsides of lots of drinking, drugging and promiscuity, but it obviously works out as Alago is our tour guide through his life.

Score: 7/10. Catch it on cable. (Recommended for music biz nerds mostly.)



An interview with Alago and the film's director, Drew Stone.

"Dawn of the Planet of the Apes" Blu-ray Review

Rewatched in prep for seeing War For the Planet of the Apes. Original review here and is still valid.

Score: 9/10. Buy it.

"Independence Day: Resurgence" Blu-ray Review

For Independence Day, the missus and I watched last Independence Day's flop, Independence Day: Resurgence because with the neighborhood sounding like Beirut with all the fireworks in the 'hood, we weren't going to bother with something deep. Even by the standards of dumb Roland Emmerich destructo-porn, it looked bad; the reviews were rough; and the Cinema Sins and Honest Trailers seemed sufficient to kill any curiosity in the endeavor.

But we still watched it because I'd picked up a cheap ($2.50) Blu-ray and, yeah, it's pretty terrible. Emmerich has always been the reference point to show that for all his myriad faults, Michael Bay ain't Roland Emmerich, but even Emmerich seems to be phoning in his work here. The original Independence Day was no great shakes despite its cheesy Nineties success and star-making performance from Will Smith (who declined to be in this sequel, his character killed off and replaced by a son who must've gotten his non-charisma from Mom's side), but ID:R doesn't even seem to want to try. I'm not even going to bother recapping the dumb plot, trite conflicts and cheesy story; it's not worth it.

The visual effects occasionally benefit from 20 years of technological advances (just as Earth did after looting the crashed spaceships from the first movie), but a frequently quite cheap-looking as you can tell they shot on empty soundstages and composited in the backgrounds as badly as The Martian did quite well. As laughable as some of the "they survive this" scenes of destruction were in 2012 or San Andreas, it's just ludicrous here.

I didn't watch the extras, but the transfer is clean and the audio booming. There are better movies as movies to show off your home theater with. 

Score: 3/10. Skip it.

The "They like to get the landmarks" line which closes the trailer isn't in the final movie. Weak.

"Baby Driver" Review

I've seen everything Edgar Wright has made, but the trailers for Baby Driver didn't really feel like one of his movies; they felt like an oddly dark crime flick at odds with the usual levity his films had. (It didn't help that the title sounded like a kiddie picture like The Boss Baby.) The critics have spooged over it (98% RT score), but they always go crazy for anything that's not a sequel and Wright has been the Wronged Auteur after putting in 8 years developing Ant-Man only to leave the project over "creative differences" with Marvel. I went into the show with mixed impressions and, unfortunately, the movie lived down to my expectations. (Though the missus thought it was awesome.)

Ansel Elgort (I remember when Hollywood imposed better names on their performers) plays Baby, a getaway driver (see how that works?) for Kevin Spacey's crime boss whose car with a trunk full of valuable MacGuffins he stole thus obliging him to work off the debt by being the wheelman for heists Spacey masterminds. He's almost paid up and his just One More Job to work before he's free.

He's made the acquaintance of a pretty waitress (Lily James from the live-action Cinderella, looking like a young Madchen Amick) and is smitten with her, but this being a gangster movie, that One Last Job rapidly turns into a You Didn't Think You Were Going To Just Walk Away From This Life, Did You? and with the arrival of a scary new shooter named Bats (Jamie Foxx, actually acting for a change), the stakes are raised to the roof with deadly results.

While the car chases and gunfights are snappily shot and edited to the hipster-bait soundtrack with gun blasts in time with the rhythm (a thing first noted in the terrific Suicide Squad trailer and aped by so many other trailers now), there is an inescapable thinness to the plot and characters. We know nothing about James' character other than she's pretty and sweet and Baby is nearly a cipher; what was he going to do if Spacey had let him go? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ When things get really dark in the last act, it's just too mean and gritty and less fun, despite being flashily executed.

I attribute these failings to Wright having sole authorship of the script. His "Cornetto Trilogy" (Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz and The World's End) were all co-written with Simon Pegg and the sublime Scott Pilgrim vs. the World had a co-writer and source material. Without the leavening of another voice, he's sort of exposed as more of a sharp director. There's no shame in that, but it unbalances the mix. There are some big laughs - a bit involving sunglasses is hilarious - and the performances are solid, but it just didn't  work well enough for me. It's not a complete wreck; more of a parking lot fender bender.

Score: 6/10. Rent it.

"Kedi" Review

If you're a cat-lover, you're going to want to see Kedi, the lovely documentary about the street cats of Istanbul. Unfortunately, it's not particularly convenient to see it.

Turkey's largest city, with a population of nearly 15 million people, sits straddling the divide between Europe and Asia. Thousands of years old and a major land and sea trade crossroads, ships from all over the world who had cats on board to control rodents found their mousers hopping off with the cargo and taking up residence.

With so many cats and so many people, you'd think they'd collide but as Kedi shows, they not only co-exist, but sometimes co-depend with many humans making great efforts to feed and love their furry feline friends. From the woman who cooks 20 pounds of chicken(!) per day to the fellow who walks around with bags of food, succoring large herds of kittehs to the woman who lets one cat in who promptly eats her indoor cat's food to the polite cat who parks outside a restaurant, never coming in or begging from the customers, but brushing his paws on the glass until they bring out smoked meats and fine cheeses, the cats of Istanbul have it made, at least in this telling.

Beautifully photographed with both soaring, tourist bureau-grade aerial drone shots of the skyline and cats-eye level tracking shots which follow the cats on their travels, Kedi makes you want to pet and cuddle all the cute critters and be happy that so many treat them as honored neighbors and not pests, even when they're biting fish off the mongers stand. One featured fellow credits caring for the kittehs for bringing him back after a nervous breakdown.

The biggest problem with Kedi is that it's a YouTube Original film meaning only YouTube Red subscribers can see it. I've had a Google Play Music subscription (it's like Spotify, but costs me a couple bucks less because I was an early adopter) for ages and got YouTube Red along with it when that started (it works vice versa, too; you get both regardless of what you sign up for), so it wasn't a problem for me, but most people have Netflix and maybe Amazon Prime and/or Hulu. Kedi is kinda stuck with no one to pet it in it's current location. If you can get a free trial, but all means put this at the top of your queue.

Score: 8.5/10. Catch it on YouTube Red.

"47 Meters Down" Review

It would be easy to presume that the girls vs. sharks flick 47 Meters Down was a quicky ripoff of last summer's sleeper girl vs. shark flick The Shallows, but it was originally slated for VOD/DVD release under the title of In The Deep less than two months after The Shallows came out in June 2016, but after seeing the success of Blake Lively's lively thriller and smelling cash-in blood in the water, another studio bought the rights and saved it for summer 2017 release, to much less success.

Watch the trailer:



That's it, folks. Claire Holt and Mandy Moore are girls on vacation in Mexico. Moore is nursing a broken heart from a breakup, so Holt convinces her to go clubbing. They meet a couple of hot locals who take them on sharking trip, the cable breaks and how will they make it up to the surface?

On its surface, 47 Meters Down should offer double the trouble of The Shallows: Instead of one babe, there's two (though come on, Blake Lively>>>Holt and Moore); instead of one shark, there are many; instead of being trapped on a rock on the surface waiting for the tide to come in, they're trapped in a cage on the ocean floor, running out of air.

But the crucial difference is that in the dark murky ocean depths, it feels claustrophobic and inert. While helping with the tension of whether sharks lurk just out of view, it rapidly feels rote. Director Johannes Roberts doesn't do much to make it visually interesting and when the sharks chomp on people, it's handled haphazardly.The third act fake-out and ending are unsatisfying as well.

Score: 3/10. Skip it and watch The Shallows.

"Aftermath" Review

My favorite type of movie to review; the kind where the synopsis is all in the trailer:



Ahnuld's family is killed in a plane crash due to a convoluted screw-up by Scoot McNairy. Grief and a quest for revenge ensue. However, despite the booming action drums, it's actually a very quiet story of grief that no one would pay notice to if it wasn't for the presence of Ahnuld and anyone looking for vintage Ahnuld ass-kicking action will be sorely disappointed. (My girlfriend remarked on how she didn't think this was "just going to be him being sad" and promptly dozed off.)

Ahnuld's performance is almost adequate if you view the emotive quality of his wooden countenance as "deeply internal" (though he's more emotive than Casey Affleck's utterly inert, yet Oscar-winning role in Manchester by the Sea) and McNairy has this impotent dweeb shtick down as anyone who's wanted to scream, "GROW A PAIR!" at him during Halt and Catch Fire or Batdude v Superdude: Dumpster Fire of Fail, but when they finally have their confrontation, it is so abrupt and unsatisfying, it makes the wait not worth it. The coda, which can be seen coming from over the horizon, is equally banal.

Score: 3/10. Skip it.

"Life" Review

When you're telling a story about the discovery of extraterrestrial life which turns into an alien loose on a space station knocking off the crew one by one, but someone beat you to the title Alien, you either try and come up with something catchy or settle for the bland and uncompelling Life, which is ironic considering how little intelligent life is present.

The alarm bells go off early in the opening shot, a needlessly showy single-take shot swooping around a moodily-lit International Space Station, introducing us to the crew, who for the sake of I don't care and it doesn't matter I will call Deadpool, Donnie Darko, Discount Idris Elba, Natasha Fatale, White Queen, and Japanese Dad. Since the ISS is familiar to anyone who has watched the news, the lack of verisimilitude (i.e. the real one is lit brightly) combined with the astronauts swearing up a storm (e.g. Deadpool shouts, "Instagram that, motherf*ckers!" - and I complain as someone who uses gratuitous profanity liberally, but I'm not an astronaut) make things feel wrong and it doesn't get better.

Their mission to retrieve a Mars probe - the particulars don't make sense - leads to the discovery of a single-cell organism. Not having seen a sci-fi movie ever, they adjust the environment in the isolation box to encourage its growth and definitely not having paid attention to Prometheus decide touching the cute widdle critter is a great life choice. (Spoiler: It's not.) It rapidly escapes and proves itself much smarter than the crew, not that these astronauts are really rocket scientists.

At its core, Life is DOA because the thinly-sketched characters are idiots doing dumb things because that's what's necessary to keep the plot stumbling forward. The squid-like alien seems able to enter and exit the station at will as if the fire-extinguishing system connects to the coolant supply and it can climb into the thrusters and exit inside the ship as if the whole place had doggie doors. We're also supposed to believe the communications system completely fails, leaving them unable to inform Earth as to what's happening, due to the alien drinking the ship's coolant and there are no backups. Super convenient that we can go to Mars to pick up alien life, but can't have backup systems. (If you saw The Martian you'll remember the plot point about all the redundant systems they'd have to circumvent in order to hijack the ship to rescue Matt Damon.)

It's too bad so much of Life depends on everyone being brain dead because director Daniel Espinosa (Safe House) does put together some impressively tense sequences which would have you holding your breath if not for the fact you're laughing at how stupid and far-fetched the cause of that tension is. A scene where a spacewalking astronaut is drowning in their suit because the alien has somehow managed to cause the coolant to leak into the suit requires the viewer to believe that there is that much liquid in the suit and that it could be caused to spill without breaching the suit; better to have had the monster clawing its way in.

At the very end, in a sequence completely ripped-off from Gravity down to certain shots, there are confusing details in a couple of shots which makes you wonder what is happening. It turns out to be deliberate to have one last whammy. It's actually the final insult of our intelligence.

Score: 3/10. Skip it.

"Catfight" Review

Netflix sent me an email that "a movie you may like" was now available. I'd never heard of Catfight, but looking at the trailer featuring Sandra Oh and Anne Heche beating the hell out of each other while clumsy class warfare antics raged around them seemed like it may have potential. A sampling of reviews were mixed, but what do critics know, right?

Sandra Oh is a rich man's wife with a sensitive artistic son and a bit of a drinking problem. Anne Heche is an angry lesbian artist whose work is confrontational and unmarketable. Their world's collide when Heche's partner, Alicia Silverstone (who at 40 looks like a less-haggard Drew Barrymore), force her to help cater water an event where they run into each other and learn they were college classmates. It all culminates in them getting into a brawl which leaves Oh bloodied and unconscious at the bottom of the stairs.

She comes out of her coma two years later finding her husband and son both dead and her money gone. Her former housekeeper takes her in and she's reduced to working for a living as a hotel maid where she discovers that Heche has become quite the hot artist as her work has found favor during the latest Middle East war that has raged while Oh slept. (The way they use a terrible late night talk show to ladle in these details is typical of the clumsy script.)

Enraged that Heche has seemingly traded places with her, Oh hunts her down at a gallery opening and a rematch ensues and that's where Catfight's simplistic structure becomes depressingly evident. You can more or less predict how the last third will play out and when it finally happens, it ends in another meaningless brawl with an ending that's even more unsatisfactory.

Despite the trite script, Sandra Oh gives a nicely layered performance, but Heche and Silverstone don't have much depth to their characters. The script is nowhere as incisive or insightful as it imagines itself, but their are a few flashes of satiric teeth, particularly in a baby shower scene in which Silverstone craps on every gift given. However, a mediocre episode of Girls has three times the laughs and insight in a third of the time, albeit with the risk of Lena Dunham inflicting her body on the audience.

Score: 3/10. Skip it.

"Prometheus" Blu-ray Review

In preparation for the upcoming Alien: Covenant, we watched Prometheus again because while I'd been watching the Blu-ray in bits and pieces as a test disc for home theater tweaking - I hadn't really watched watched it despite getting the deluxe 3D version upon its release (more on this in a moment) - the missus hadn't seen it since we'd seen it in the theater five years ago. I don't know why I haven't written up a review of this package before and there's a problem with it you'll see it a bit, but I must note have screened the full movie thus the lack of an entry here.

While people still treat Prometheus as some sort of cinematic war crime, on second appraisal it's not that bad and I'd bump the film score up to a 7/10. The dumb stuff is still dumb and Holloway is a complete tool and thus his death isn't really that much of a loss (spoiler alert!), but the overall slick style, Fassbender's performance and Ridley Scott's ability to still throw down a tense scene like the auto-doc alien extraction sequence make it a missed opportunity more than a complete failure.

More problematic is this Blu-ray release which along with Life of Pi saw Fox putting some of the special features exclusively on the 3D version release, forcing people to either buy a version they may not even have the capability or interest in watching in order to get all the extras or doing without. While Life of Pi's omitted extras appear to be minor, the 4-disc collector's edition I bought (and sold off the 3D disc to a friend) came with an amazing disc of extras with a production documentary and tons of goodies which were actually better than the movie itself. The problem is that it appears to have gone out of print - it lists on Amazon for over $350(!!!) and while Best Buy lists it for $20, it's not actually available. 

If you're not an extras fiend like me, then the basic disc is a good pickup for $10 or less; the transfer and audio are pristine and the movie doesn't totally blow despite being full of bonehead actions which led to Cinema Sins coining the "Prometheus School For Running Away From Things" to describe any time people aren't trying to dodge to the side.

Score: Collector's Edition - 8.5/10. Buy it if you can find it. Regular Edition - 7/10. Buy it cheap.

"Guardians of the Galaxy" Review

Watched it again on Vudu with the girlfriend in prep for seeing the sequel with her. She slept through most of it because she's seen it before. Sigh. Hope she remembers enough to understand what's happening.

Score: 8.5/10.