Theatrical Reviews: Cinderella (2015)

I really like Disney’s classic animated films; they’re important to me in a big sort of way.  That is why I do not appreciate Disney’s recent streak of live-action remakes of said animated features.  First there was Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland, which was awful; then there was Maleficent, which was worse.  The original films feel timeless, and I resent that these remakes are turning them into something undeniably modern.

Cinderella, which is the first in a new huge group of live-action remakes of Disney’s doing, does something those previous examples do not; It respects the source material.  Not just the animated film that most people think of when they think of Cinderella, but the original story as well.  The movie doesn’t feel like it’s trying to go back and defile a beloved classic, it instead feels like its simply paying homage to it.

Cinderella does not save the princes’ life in this new flick, nor does she learn that being a strong independent woman is more important than any man.  The movie stays true to what the original Cinderella was, a simple fantasy; a love story.  The movie is able to dance around some of the questionable elements from the 1950’s animated pic, while changing the story very little.

Is the live action Cinderella as charming as the other?  No; nor does it have the same narrative energy or lovable cast of animal cartoon characters.  I doubt I will ever say to myself, “I think I’d rather watch the 2015 remake Cinderella today, and not the animated one.”  That said the Cinderella remake did a lot to remind me of why I liked its source material in the first place.  It may not be as charming and fun as I’d like, but my expectations are hard to meet in that category, and I enjoyed the heck out of this movie regardless.

Its faults are large in number but small in stature.  The dialogue is a little forced, the beginning is a little slow and the step-sisters are a little too annoying.  The movie might have seriously benefited from another script draft or two, and the acting is occasionally stale.

The movies faults, however, are widely over encompassed by its strengths.  Cinderella, the remake, is able to get to the heart of the Cinderella story in a very intelligent way; and Kenneth Branagh’s direction is exquisite.  The acting is, with a few exceptions, wonderful; especially from Cate Blanchett whose evil stepmother carries large sections of the film.  The plot, at the same time, does just enough to differentiate itself from the original, while still tapping into the child-like wonder that we associate with Disney animation. 

Cinderella is a corny one-dimensional love story; but leave it to Kenneth Branagh to make the best gosh-darn one-dimensional love story he could muster.  Is the film simplistic and unrealistic?  Of course it is!  That’s why it’s called a fantasy.  What we have here is a fantasy with some beautiful visuals, likable characters and an entertaining plot.  What more could you want from a movie called Cinderella?  Despite all of my belly-aching about this remake not being as good as the original, I will probably check this one out again.  It’s full of fun and wonder, and that is exactly what you want a movie like this to be.  If you’re taking you’re daughter to the movies, I can’t think of a better flick to see than Cinderella.

Theatrical Reviews: Chappie

Neil Blomkamp is not a favorite director of mine.  That may just be due to bad will from all of the District 9 over-hype back in 2009; but that doesn’t make up for the fact that he has given little proof that he deserves his high-profile director position. Every movie I’ve seen from him has been some level of mediocre, and Chappie, his latest, is no exception.

To be clear:  I don’t dislike Chappie; In fact I think it may be the best movie Blomkamp has made so far.  Chappie, like most of Blomkamp's movies, is visually entertaining, intellectually stimulating and, at the same time, horribly written and almost offensively brainless; but unlike his other movies, Chappie has a decent amount of characterization and intriguing plot elements to help keep it on track.

Chappie himself is actually a very endearing character, and the movie focuses mostly on him.  The other characters may seem one dimensional and lame, because they are, but that doesn’t matter as much when they aren’t the focus.  It’s truly heart melting watching Chappie age from robo-childhood to robo-adulthood, and his voice, which is provided by the talented Charlto Copley, adds a lot to what makes him work.  The movie is kind of like a  robot version of Boyhood in this manner, and while that doesn’t work great; it does indeed work. 

What mostly brings the movie down is the script.  The majority of these characters are absolutely ridiculous and unbelievable; and many of the plot elements are laughably ridiculous. 

Hugh Jackman’s villain character is particularly bizzare, and many of his motivations are never made clear; he just sort of seems like a psychopathic jerk.  The character isn’t awful, but that’s not because of the writing; it’s because Hugh Jackman is a good actor.  Overall though, his character feels tacked on to the story.

Almost as bad as the villain; their are two characters played by a couple of famous South African rappers.  Who's characters are a couple of criminals who's names are the same as the musicians who play them; and also they wear their own band T-shirts in the film, decimating the fourth wall, and making me want to puke a little bit.  These guys must be big in South Africa, because they're featured more then Hugh Jackman or Sigourney Weaver.  Fortunately the two of them are passable actors, so it isn't too distracting; but their casting is still baffling to me.

So with all of these bad bits and complaints one might think that Chappie was just as lame as Elysium or (I know this isn’t a popular opinion) District 9, but this time the sci-fi morality tale isn't at the center of the story, A likable character is.  Chappie contains a lot of the moral and social commentary that its predecessors did, but now those things are in the background of an enjoyable story, not at the forefront.  It is encouraging to me that Blomkamp is now trying to put ideas into stories and not the other way around.

I don’t love Chappie, but I do like it, and I’m glad I got t see it.  It’s got flaws coming out all of it’s apertures, but it does a lot of things right to counter balance those flaws.  Is it a good movie?  It might be; I’d recommend buying a ticket and deciding for yourself.

Theatrical Reviews: Focus

People seem to love watching comedic crime-thrillers.  The box office gross on last years Now You See Me should be evidence enough of that.  People like snarky masterminds, thrilling plots and sudden plot twists; and what better ways to get these things than to watch a con-man, thief or gangster go all in for one last score.

So don’t be surprised when Focus, the new crime-thrillers on the block, takes #1 at the box office this weekend.  It has all the ingredients necessary for a surprise hit.  It has a popular cast, a mysterious plot, style and humor.  But unfortunately, despite its marketability, Focus is a pretty lame movie.

Does the movie have snark and humor? Yeah; and the twists are as surprising as they come.  But what Focus, like the majority of commercial films, is essentially trying to is create a captivating story; and at that it ultimately fails.

The film is all over the place.  Is Nikki, Will Smith’s character, a villain?  Is he really in love with Margot Robbie’s character or is it all a scam?  Is she scamming him?  I honestly have no idea; the movie, even at its conclusion, shows no promise of letting the audience know what is going on.  The whole point of a movie like this is that, at the end, all will be illuminated and your mind will be blown; but for some reason Focus never gets to the big finale, it never illuminates anything.  I watched the movie all the way through, and I still have almost no idea who these characters were or why we should care about them.

The actors don’t really help all that much either.  Will Smith isn’t a bad actor by any means, but he doesn’t exactly show a Fresh Prince level of charisma.  Margot Robbie does a decent job as well, but she isn’t fantastic.  These performances are serviceable, but they do nothing to alleviate the messy script above its original messiness.

Plotwise Focus is all over the map.  It establishes one plot then switches to another;  creates a central premise then abandons it completely.  This is all done in an attempt to make the story twisty and exciting; but it mostly just renders the film pointless.  And worst of all?  Many of the plot twists render previous sequences completely impossible.  The twists don’t make any sense at all.

Focus is a movie with a scattered plot, unenthusiastic characters and a terrible ending.  It never really grabs onto a good protagonist, antagonist or central arc.  It fails to be an interesting thriller, but worse than that, it fails to tell a sensical story.  It pains me to say it; but Focus lacks all focus.

Theatrical Reviews: The DUFF

I have almost no reason to ever bother watching High-school Teen-girl movies.  I am not a girl, I am not a teen, and I’m constantly trying to forget that I was ever in High-School.  In other-words: This genre of movie is not really meant for me.  I’ve seen a solid hand-full, but as a rule I don’t have much use for them.

The DUFF, the latest high-school teen-girl movie to be released in theaters, could have easily been another in a line of pointless unfunny comedies, but instead it works thanks to a great cast, and decent filmmaking.

Now before you rush off to IMDB to see what famous comedic geniuses are starring in this film, I’ll let you know that there aren’t any.  The movie is mostly made up of actors who you’ve either never seen before, or only maybe seen once for a minute.  The group however do a perfect job with the borderline-obnoxious material, and often manage to render funny things that have no business being funny.

On paper the DUFF is somewhat frustrating, but on screen it is surprisingly enjoyable.  This is mostly due to the fact that the characters aren’t soulless caricatures of puberty, but instead mostly-likable characters with identities.  It’s the great cast that brings this flick to life; The DUFF would have probably been a disaster without the talents of Mae Whitman and Robbie Amell to keep things going.

The plot itself is a little juvenile, and has been kind of beaten to death.  A new dress and a make-over are the cure-all for the protagonist’s insecurity problems, and the two leads start out as friends then slowly develop feelings for each other as the film progresses.  The female lead is an average looking teen in a world full of apparently more attractive teens (you can tell that the other girls are more attractive because they wear more lipstick,)  and the most beautiful of them all is, of course, a psychotic jerk to the others.  There is a lot of annoying paint-by-the-numbers tropes in The DUFF.

I’d say that the movie is just a lame girly teen-movie with a stellar cast; but I think there might be something lying under the skin of The DUFF that its genre predecessors do not have.  The movie is about dealing with your own inadequacies and insecurities, and it talks about this matter in a surprisingly mature way.  Everyone has to find a way to cope with the fact that there will always be someone better than them around the corner; and while The DUFF doesn’t create a particularly sane way of dealing with this problem, at least it admits that there is one.

At its core The DUFF is an escapist wish-fulfillment picture for a demographic that I am in no way a part of.  I have no desire to go shop for new outfits, tell that jerk girl at school what’s coming to her or date the muscular school jock;  yet I still found the movie fairly charming and enjoyable thanks to its smart-ish script and fantastic cast.  I can only imagine that the films target audience will enjoy it 10 times more then I did.  It shows the kind of life that can be breathed into a tired sub-genre when the filmmakers actually care about what they are putting on-screen.  Good show.

Theatrical Reviews: Hot Tub Time Machine 2

You know what movie I didn’t see?  The first Hot Tub Time Machine.  That’s right I saw the sequel, and not the better-liked original.  That means that I had almost no expectations going into this flick; and the result?  I kind of enjoyed myself.

                            

This movie makes very little sense.  The plot is nonsensical and the character motivations are highly questionable.  It’s a mess, but the jokes and bizarre plot threads are just eclectic and disgusting enough to make the movie entertaining.

Hot Tub Time Machine 2 is not trying very hard to be . . . an actual movie.  Its storyline has been prioritized behind the jokes, the set-ups and pretty much everything else.  If you want a film with a cohesive plot, and a lovable cast of characters then look elsewhere; Hot tub time Machine 2 is pretty much just in it for the gags.

The cast will not become popular leading men in Hollywood anytime soon; they do not seem to have a talent for crafting likable characters.  Craig Robinson’s character is the only one in the cast who could pass for a passable member of humanity.  I get the feeling that the presence of John Cusack, the star of the original, would seriously help this Cusack-less sequel along.

What the remaining cast do excel at, however, is being funny.  In the hands of another cast all this pointless gross-out weirdness could be obnoxious; but these guys put their all into it, and for the most part it works.  This cast hams it up; having so much fun that it’s kind of hard not to have fun with them.  Rob Corddry in particular goes manically haywire with his character; and it’s a blast to watch.

You can go ahead and add this one to the long list of Atchley-O-Saurus guilty pleasures.  I cannot give this movie the pass based on its over-all quality.  But, on the other hand, the movie has gross out humor and time travel!  How can you go wrong?

“HTTM2”, as I’ve already mentioned, just doesn’t work on a story level; and it’s a shame.  It has some good comedic skin, but they didn’t bother to put any bones underneath.  It’s not the best gross-out comedy I’ve ever seen by a long shot, but it’s the only one in the marketplace right now. So if you’re in the mood for borderline offensive debauchery; as of this writing, Hot Tub Time Machine 2 is probably your best shot.

Theatrical Reviews: Fifty Shades of Grey

The whole point of Fifty Shades of Grey is sex.  That tells me that it’s basically just glorified pornography; but that is hardly the case.  Never before have I thought it possible for a movie to both contain way too much sex, and simultaneously be totally sexless.  Despite it’s erotic subject matter, Fifty Shades of Grey has no pulse.

The movies physical failings are only a small part of what makes it suck.  If I had thought the movie would just be a series of sedate sex sequences I wouldn’t have bothered; but based on the nation-wide success of the book from which it is based, I made the assumption that there was some kind of intriguing story behind all the hullabaloo.  People like me, who are curious for some unique controversial storytelling, will be sorely disappointed.

Fifty Shades of Grey is boring.  I have no idea how they made a movie about taboo sex boring, but they found a way.  The two leads are as awkwardly un-intriguing as humanly possible, and their plot and conflict barely exist.  This movie could be summed up without losing any nuance in five minutes; yet it’s runtime goes well over two hours.  It has zero stakes, zero conflict; and the result is that it elicits zero interest from its audience.  It isn’t even offensive or shocking; I at least expected this movie to be offensively bad, but it’s just endlessly dull.

And did I mention the script?  Because the script is awful; cartoonishly awful.  Imagine a giant corn baking corn inside of an oven made of corn, and you may get an inkling of how corny the Fifty Shades of Grey dialogue is.  Imagine a flat-line and an obnoxious beeping noise, and you’ll get an idea of how ineffective and annoying the Fifty Shades of Grey plotline is.  I hear tell that they cut out large chunks of the book for the film adaptation, and thank goodness that they did; I don’t think I could have withstood anymore of this terrible movie script.

When a movie has a bad script and dreary direction only one thing can save it:  The acting.  Yet Fifty Shades of Grey has some Razzy worth performances.  They could have replaced Jamie Dorman, the guy who plays the male lead, with a board of wood and some great abs and I wouldn’t have been able to tell the difference.  The other actors hardly knock it out of the park either.  Dakota Johnson admittedly had her good moments; but she also had some really crummy moments, especially when she was trying to pretend like she had any chemistry at all with dumb and dull Dornan.

The only way I can think of even attempting to enjoy “50 Shades” is ironically.  Bring some friends, make some jokes and you might have a jolly old time.  That, however, was not how this movie was intended to be viewed; it was meant to be taken seriously.  So it fails.  I cannot think of a less romantic, less appealing romance for anyone to watch.  It’s basically just a Twilight remake but with BDSM; and that is just as painful as it sounds.

Theatrical Reviews: Kingsman: The Secret Service

Kingsman: the Secret Service is going to be a bit polarizing to the general audience.  People will be thrown off by the excessive violence, the rude humor and general lack of taste.  Mathew Vaughn, the director of this picture, polarized audiences in a similar way with 2010’s “Kick-Ass,” and he doesn’t seem to have changed his cinematic stripes since he directed that surprisingly entertaining super-hero flick.

This brand of subversive, unique and almost exploitative action movie could have easily been annoying or abrasive, but Vaughn is a brilliant story teller.  With Kingsman he has taken a movie plot that easily could have spawned another unmemorable February flop; and transformed into an incredibly entertaining ball of lovable cheese.  There are a lot of things that are wrong with Kingsman: the Secret Service, but it has so much energy and character that it’s difficult not to be charmed by it.

There are really only a few things a big dumb action movie like this needs to be entertaining; and the filmmakers know how it’s done.

Big soaring memorable score: Check

Likable cast of characters:  Check

Plenty of momentum and energy:  That’s a check

Entertaining action sequences:  That’s a big check

The movies plot is pretty by-the-books, and its ending is very predictable;  but when a story, no matter how juvenile, is told this well through the film medium you’ve got to appreciate it.   The movie never lags, it’s always fun and it occasionally surprises; what more could you possibly want.  Kingsman: The Secret Service may not be about anything deep, nor does its plot go anywhere particularly interesting, but the ride that we take getting to nowhere special is a great one, and I’m glad I took it.

All the actors, set pieces and plot points work incredibly well.  Even the training sequences, which threaten to bog the movie down, are used to keep the movies adrenaline high.  Egerton, who plays the lead, is especially impressive performace;  I could definitely see him getting more leading man roles in the future.  The movie is to good for any one actor to carry it;  but Egerton certainly pulls his weight.

This is the movie that I wanted Guardians of the Galaxy to be; but it never quite got there.  That movie felt just a little bit awkward and plodding to be as entertaining and lovable as it should have been.  Kingsman taps into your inner id in ways that very few movies can.  I left the movie with a big smile on my face, and I bet that you will too.  If you want a solid helping of brainless escapism this winter, I can’t imagine a movie that could top Kingman: The Secret Service.