Review: ‘Beasts of the Southern Wild’

beasts_of_the_southern_wild“Beasts of the Southern Wild” is a fantastic movie, the feature-length debut of young filmmaker Benh Zeitlin, made in part with his New Orleans-based film group Court 13 Pictures, and it’s the type of unique and strong movie debut that makes people sit up and take notice, that this might be one of our next young exciting new voices in American cinema. And this wonderful thing, birthed outside of the studio system, outside of the box, independent in every way possible, exists as proof that imagination and new art and ambition is not dead, that we can still get something new and weird and great, something as strange and confident as “Beasts of the Southern Wild.”

The story centers on six-year old Hushpuppy (Quvenzhané Wallis) and her dad Wink (Dwight Henry), who live in a makeshift home in the ramshackle little town of Bathtub, located on an island south of the Louisiana coast. When a huge storm heads their way, they stay behind with a few other holdouts who choose not to evacuate their homes, and after an incredibly rough storm, the entire town of Bathtub is submerged underwater. The towns few survivors band together and try to continue living in their flooded home, refusing to seek aid or shelter elsewhere. These are people thoroughly accustomed to living on their own and getting by in their own ways, so to them a government run disaster shelter is its own kind of horrible hell.Continue Reading …

Review: ‘Battleship’

battleship_ver12Let’s get this out of the way, right up front: we all know “Battleship” is preposterously based on a plotless, characterless board game that involves yelling out random letters and numbers, so to expect a good movie out of this would seem to be a fool’s errand. With the whole thing reeking of “cashing in,” thanks to the ridiculous financial success of another film franchise based on a toyline, maybe it doesn’t even need to be said that “Battleship” is a dumb, spectacle-first, story-last, explosion laden, typical summer hunk of crap of the first order. But then again, who said it had to be this way?

Though Battleship: the Board Game is itself a truly iconic game, spanning generations and entertaining everyone with it’s simple yet addictive mechanics, there really is very little about the game that one would expect in a feature film. There’s the grid structure and guessing dynamic of the game, and the catch phrase “You sunk my battleship,” and that’s it. So theoretically, it would actually be pretty simple to come up with a naval based story that somehow incorporates these elements, and on paper, Peter Berg and writers Jon and Erich Hoeber’s approach of using an alien menace as the antagonists is fairly brilliant, allowing them to come up with alien technology in their story that would necessitate the use of the board game’s well known game play and also giving them plenty of room to come up with their own characters and story arcs; with such a blank slate to work with, these guys really could have told any story they wanted to, all dressed up in the guise of blockbuster entertainment.Continue Reading …

Review: ‘Apollo 18’

Apollo18MoviePosterThe “found footage” mockumentary genre has been going surprisingly strong since “The Blair Witch Project” popularized the filmmaking style in the 1990’s, and it was only a matter of time before the genre found its way into outer space. In what might be the first totally lunar-based horror film, “Apollo 18” purports to be an assemblage of discovered NASA footage detailing a secret Moon mission and revealing the apparent horrors that have prevented humans from returning.

Three astronauts go up in Apollo 18 in a secret mission to plant little radars for the Department of Defense, apparently to help keep an eye on Soviet missiles that might come their way. Once at the moon, John Grey (Ryan Robbins, AVPR: Aliens vs Predator – Requiem) stays in the spacecraft in orbit, and the lunar module is taken down by Ben Anderson (Warren Christie, Bachelor Party 2: The Last Temptation) and Nathan Walker (Lloyd Owen, The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles). After they touch down, Anderson and Walker set on their two-day mission to install the DoD radars and motion sensor cameras, though they never explain why these cameras are installed (obviously it’s so we can have a movie in the first place, but still, they never explain it and the astronauts don’t question it). Very quickly, these two guys discover that something is a little strange on the surface of the moon, and the cameras catch little glimpses of movement here and there, and it’s a slow burn to the gradual reveal of what’s really going on.Continue Reading …

Review: ‘Sausage Party’

SausageParty_Poster“Sausage Party” is the story of how a fella named Frank goes on a journey of discovery, as he always “knew” one truth about The Great Beyond but then suddenly was presented with evidence that showed him something else, something that propelled him to figure out what really awaits everyone in the next world, and he becomes determined to take this new information and let everyone else know about it so they can all be in on the grand ultimate truth together.

You see, when things start out, Frank (Seth Rogen) and Brenda (Kristen Wiig) are just a couple of lovebirds waiting for the correct, predetermined time for them to be able to consummate their love, and they are surrounded by like-minded folks all wanting the same thing. And near them are other groups, with differences throughout but still all united under one common theme – awaiting The Great Beyond. In The Great Beyond they know they only have good things waiting for them, and these good things change depending on what each group wants, but it all boils down to “good times for all.” Everyone is so excited for the grandness of The Great Beyond that they are desperate to get their soon, hoping every morning that would be the day they are chosen to move on.Continue Reading …

Review: ‘Pete’s Dragon’

PetesDragon_MoviePoster]“Pete’s Dragon” is the surprisingly sad story of a young boy who lives in the forest with a big green dragon, and it would have been a fun and light story if the whole thing wasn’t drenched in a feeling of separation anxiety and gloominess as the story of Pete is one of a childhood lost and moving on from innocence into a  worldly-tainted adulthood without magic or presumably joy. In old school Disney fashion, like the animated films of the 30s and 40s, this new “Pete’s Dragon” is here to entertain but does so in a dark way, filled with death and abandonment and dark forces working actively to deprive the young hero of their source of comfort and joy.

After an opening scene involving a car accident in the middle of nowhere which results in an instant orphan being hunted by wolves and then being saved and adopted by a giant green dragon, we jump forward six years, and this kid is now about 10 years old or so and running around the forest barefoot and shirtless, dirty and long haired, climbing trees and catching rabbits barehanded, completely adapted to his environment and at wild lifestyle. It helps that he has a big loyal dragon helping him out and getting his back when predators might stroll up. This is the story of Pete (Oakes Fegley) and his dragon Elliot, which is really just a big ole dog with wings, making him quite lovable.Continue Reading …

Review: ‘Transformers: Dark of the Moon’

transformersdarkofthemoon_poster“Transformers: Dark of the Moon” is the third of four (and soon to be five) mega opuses from Michael Bay about two races of sentient machine-based alien life forms who can change into cars and trucks and who play out their epic civil war on Earth because the war has already destroyed their own home Cybertron (which makes these some inconsiderate aliens, if you ask me). These cars and trucks engage in massive battles that destroy countless buildings and take the lives of so many people that they don’t even bother mentioning it in any way, shape or form, that’s how important those thousands and thousands of unseen dead are in this movie, and the whole time there are these pip-squeak humans literally running around the feet of these giant robots and pretending to do stuff that matters when all they can really do is keep from getting stomped out.

Okay, that’s actually the basic plot of everything Transformers-related, so what would make things any different this time around? Compared to the other films, “Transformers: Dark of the Moon” is actually the best scripted, in that it uses less absurd macguffins like the eyeglasses with the map on them or the “allspark” in the first film, or the search for the “matrix of leadership” in the second film (along with the return of the aforementioned “allspark” thingy). This third movie sees the return of this matrix of leadership contrivance, but they find a better way to use it in terms of getting the plot rolling along, and otherwise they drop all the crap and keep it relatively simple (relatively).Continue Reading …

Review: ‘Another Earth’

Another-Earthp“Another Earth” is one of those little indie films that comes out of the film festival circuit with lots of buzz and good will and jury prize awards and what not, so by the time it hits the multiplexes (if it does at all), it’s already positioned as the new great film from some exciting new voices in cinema. Which makes it disappointing when the movie actually turns out to be kinda crappy, because if it were viewed without all of that positive word of mouth, then maybe it would have just been seen as an okay movie and a solid debut from an interesting young filmmaker. But instead, since it was positioned as the next Solaris or 2001: A Space Odyssey, expectations became too high and it gains extra scrutinization, and unfortunately “Another Earth” doesn’t hold up under the scrutiny.

“Another Earth” is the story of a 17-year old high school graduate named Rhoda Williams (Brit Marling, who also co-wrote the story), and the movie starts with her celebrating her acceptance into MIT, which shows she’s a very smart person with lots of potential and promise. Rhoda immediately throws all of this potential and promise out of the window when she goes drunk driving after her celebration and ends up plowing into another car, putting a successful composer named John Burroughs (William Mapother, Mission: Impossible 2) into a coma and killing his young son and pregnant wife. Jump cut to four years later with Rhoda getting out of prison. She takes a job at her old high school as a janitor, she secludes herself from just about everyone else, and she sets out to make amends with John the composer. But when she goes to his home to apologize to him, she loses her nerve and makes up a story about being from a maid service, offering a free trial. And John, who is apparently now a drunkard and suffering from some brain damage, allows Rhoda into his home to clean.Continue Reading …

Review: ‘Anonymous’

anonymous_xlgBased on a theory that many segments of the literari think to be ridiculous, and made by a director of films many film critics think to be ridiculous, “Anonymous” is definitely one of the more interesting and daring films of 2011. From Roland Emmerich, director of mega blockbusters such as “Independence Day: Resurgence,” “Stargate,” “The Day After Tomorrow” and “2012,” comes a movie about the complex and many-threaded political machinations of Elizabethan Britain and how the work of William Shakespeare somehow fit into all of it, and not in the way that people would traditionally believe when they think of the timeless English playwright.

“Anonymous” tells a story that goes something like this: with Queen Elizabeth (Vanessa Redgrave) all old and on the outs, a political tug of war ensues to get the Queen to pick a successor. Her immediate aides and advisors pulled for the King of Scotland, knowing that his appointment would secure their further employ in the castle. And they feared that the Earl of Essex would try to claim the throne, being a cast off bastard son of the Queen, and he would dismiss them, take their property and throw them out on their asses. So they did what they could to make sure the Earl didn’t take the throne.Continue Reading …

Review: ‘Alex Cross’

alex_cross_ver5_xlg“Alex Cross” is a boring, fairly hackneyed attempt at a crime procedural thriller, ably acted by Tyler Perry and Matthew Fox but weakly directed by Rob Cohen, who seems far too concerned with what’s cool as opposed to what’s smart and right for the story, and failing at both aspects anyway. What could essentially be an episode of any random network television crime procedural television show, “Alex Cross” really offers nothing new to the genre and doesn’t do anything fun or interesting with the old clichés, which results in a boring 101 minutes.

Detective Dr. Alex Cross (Tyler Perry) heads up a small team that apparently focuses on women killers, as the movie starts with them tracking down a kidnapper and saving a young girl, both of whom are unrelated to the rest of the story. Cross is pretty great at what he does, displaying a Sherlock Holmes level of crime scene deduction and reasoning that is always right and never is questioned, but he does come across a dangerous foe in the form of a random hired killer (Matthew Fox), who is hired to kill three people, and goes after them one at a time. Fox plays this role with a level of obvious insanity, all wide eyes and shaved head, and he definitely seemed to have fun playing this sadistic and crazy character, and he pretty much acts as the one watchable and somewhat interesting thing in this whole film. So Fox and his team try to catch this guy and the whole movie is a game of cat and mouse, with the killer taking out people close to Detective Dr. Cross, making it personal and forcing Cross to go out on a righteous search for retribution.Continue Reading …

Review: ‘Suicide Squad’

SuicideSquad_MoviePosterIn “Suicide Squad,” a ragtag group of suicide squaders doing some suicide squadding and battle some sort of vague magic, while something close to thirty different songs get briefly played to convey some sort of feeling of I guess “fun.” Also Jared Leto is a tattooed Joker and Ben Affleck’s Batman shows up for two short scenes, one quick “dream sequence,” and a boring mid-credits after-movie scene in which no new information is conveyed beyond what fans of these films already know.

What could have been either a wild romp of a comic book movie or a brilliant anti-hero subversion of what we’ve already seen dozens of times instead turned into a movie that tried to be both at the same time, and that really just doesn’t work. You can’t have one character openly pine for his young daughter while another mugs for the camera right next to him. It’s one or the other. Serious or light. “The Dark Knight” or “Guardians of the Galaxy.” That middle ground is brutal.

Also, just to get this out of the way right now, can we please be done with the tired “energy beam shooting into the sky from a building in the middle of a city” trope? The one the heroes always have to shut down to save the city or world or universe? You know, the one used in “Marvel’s The Avengers” and again in “R.I.P.D.?” Also used in the most recent “Fantastic Four” and “The Amazing Spider-Man” and “Ghostbusters” and there are also variations of this trope used in “Man of Steel” and “Avengers: Age of Ultron,” just to name a few examples. There’s always a big colorful swirling vortex over the city either sucking things in or spitting things out, and terrible things are happening, and then it gets stopped by the good guys and the vortex goes away like it was never even there. We’ve seen it a lot, and if you see “Suicide Squad,” then you are going to see it again.Continue Reading …