Review: ‘The Purge: Anarchy’

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“The Purge” was a 2013 horror movie, in which it was posited that America would have extremely low unemployment levels and crime rates if all crime was legal one night of the year. Somehow if people were allowed to do anything they wanted, including murder, for 12 hours out of 365 days, then they would be totally chill the rest of the year, due to the release of their aggression. This is a bunch of bullshit, because one does not follow the other. Aggressive people are aggressive people year round, and people with criminal tendencies can’t just sit on them for the other 8,748 hours of the year. So the premise of that movie was BS and then the movie itself didn’t do anything with this premise and instead was just a run of the mill home invasion film (albeit one with Ethan Hawke totally giving it his all and classing up the joint). So in summation, “The Purge” was bullshit through and through.Continue Reading …

Review: ‘Dawn of the Planet of the Apes’

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Look this one is pretty obvious thematically speaking, amiright? We can all agree on this much. As a continuing allegory for the age old inability of the human race to work together in peace and harmony and without hurting each other, “Dawn of the Planet of the Apes” hits all the most obvious albeit important notes over and over, those about the importance of family and the duality of man and the conundrum of how our survival instinct can lead to our own downfall. In the most simplest of terms, after everything is left in shambles and on fire and smoldering with the specter of violence of death draped over the world, the most important question is asked: Can’t we all just get along?

“Dawn of the Planet of the Apes” is not an excellent movie because of the top notch and often stunning visual effects or because of the well crafted and interesting action scenes but instead it is excellent because of how the movie is properly made from start to finish, with each scene moving the story forward, either via advancing the plot, the themes or the characters, often times simultaneously, and it makes for a fast moving, engaging and interesting summer blockbuster. Entire scenes consist only of computer generated characters, communicating often in soft grunts and sign language, yet thanks to some bold yet beautiful strokes, so much information is given that it allows us to actually get to KNOW these characters, and to understand their wants and needs, and this is a beautiful thing.Continue Reading …

Review: ‘Earth to Echo’

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In the grand tradition of movies about kids biting off more than they can chew a la “E.T.” or “The Goonies” or “The Sandlot,” here comes “Earth to Echo” a movie about some kids biting off more than they can chew, but this time in the form of a found footage movie. Oh how simple it is to update age old tropes to modern standards.

“Earth to Echo” starts with three kids who are friends but who find their friendship threatened by the spectre of Big Brother, as eminent domain forces them to move out of their neighborhood so a freeway can be built through the area. On their last night together, these three kids decide to investigate some random map zapped on to their cell phones, mostly in an effort to try to do something memorable with their last night together. And sure enough, when the map leads them to a cute tiny little alien, they find themselves on a mission to help this little alien guy find his spaceship so he can go home.Continue Reading …

Review: ‘Snowpiercer’

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After a global experiment to reverse the trend of global warming goes horribly wrong and plunges the entire Earth into a modern ice age, killing practically all life on the planet in the process, a single bullet train carrying the world’s survivors makes a year-long loop around the world, preserving what is left of mankind, in a daily struggle to keep humans from becoming extinct. This is the set up for the most expensive South Korean film ever made, “Snowpiercer,” and this movie is pretty much as good as it gets, proof that high-concept fare and action-filled science fiction can also be thoughtful and smart and above all else well made.

The story of “Snowpiercer” starts up 17-18 years after the failed experiment pretty much destroyed the world, and the people who were all able to climb aboard the train find that not only were they preserving humanity, they were also preserving humanity’s main mode of existence, which seems to be centered on class division and the concept of the strong eating the weak. The poorest of people who still managed to get on the train were relegated to the very back of the train, where their quarters were overly populated and extremely cramped, as well as very dirty and lacking in basic necessities. Forced to fend for themselves, the people in the tail end of the train grew to resent the people in the front of the train, and over the years a few revolutions and uprisings have flared up, only to be beaten back by those who run the train, using armed guards and a prison system to keep people in line.Continue Reading …

Review: ‘The Rover’

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“The Rover” is an Australian western set in the future, but that doesn’t mean sci-fi in any way, as actually they go in the other direction, depicting a world totally collapsed and depressed, a harsh world with no amenities or benefits of technology, but instead a barren land of little food and less hope. This is the world in which this story exists, and it is a brutal world, one in which the rule of the land is merely survival of the fittest and nothing more.

And in a scenario like this, one must be wary of people like Eric (Guy Pearce), a man whose sole possession is his car, and who has nothing else in his life, and definitely nothing to live for. The movie starts with him sitting in his car in the heat of the desert as flies buzz around his face, and he can’t even be bothered to swipe them away, he just lets them land on his face and mouth and he doesn’t care at all. So when three dumb criminals steal his car and use it as a getaway vehicle, he sets out to find the guys and get his car back because he’s got nothing else, nothing to lose, no loved ones waiting for him, no place to go, he has all the time and hate in the world, so off he goes, looking for his car.Continue Reading …

Review: ‘Jersey Boys’

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Here is one of my patent-pending “a day late and a dollar short” reviews, cause I saw “Jersey Boys” a week ago and still haven’t gotten around to doing this, and by now enough has been written about this movie that is there really anything that I can add, or will it just be more white noise? In any case here we go, a quick little write up on an adaptation of an extremely popular Broadway musical featuring the music of the late 1950’s made by the guy best known for starring in Westerns and Cop films and directing muted films scattered over a wide array of genres.

I did not grow up listening to Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons and I never saw the Broadway musical which this movie is based on (which itself is the “official” story of the Valli and the Four Seasons, as still living group members Valli and writer-producer Bob Gaudio produced the whole thing, hence telling their side of the story, so take that how you will), and as a matter of fact, I am the kind of person who just realized thanks to this movie that a bunch of songs I’ve heard over and over were actually written and performed by the same group. So this is all to say that I was able to sit down and watch this movie without any baggage of having to compare it to the musical or having any vested emotions into the group and what they meant to me (as in the long run they really mean nothing to me), hence there is nothing for me to get hung up on, I can just watch this movie as just that, a movie.Continue Reading …

Review: ‘Transformers: Age of Extinction’

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Well what the hell did ya expect? Michael Bay has made three Transformers movies of varying degrees of quality (said degrees ranging from “watchable” to “abominations”), so when he announced he would do a fourth one, did any of us think that it would be that much better or that much worse than any of the other films? If we did, we were foolish. Because “Transformers: Age of Extinction” is just another Michael Bay Transformers movie, with the only thing really separating it from the rest is the length, which is to say, this movie is long as Hell. So depending on your opinion of the other three movies, this new installment is either more of that same chaotic (Bay-otic) action and mechanical Sturm und Drang that you’ve come to love, or it is visual and aural torture akin to cinematic waterboarding, as you just feel like you are drowning in relentless action and noise.

Then again, you could fall right in the middle of these two reactions, because even for the uninitiated (for we ARE initiated), there are some things that can be appreciated in this story of humans trying to take their planet back from the alien robot beings that hide among them, whether or not these alien robots were formerly friends or foes of said humans. It is an us versus them scenario, with the only thing balancing out the aliens’ advanced technology being the humans sheer force of numbers, as well as their crafty and underhanded nature (as exemplified by shady government dealings with multiple parties).Continue Reading …

Review: ’22 Jump Street’

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The comedy sequel is a tough nut to crack. It is nearly impossible to recapture the magic that makes a comedy so memorable and fun to begin with, as if there is some sort of blueprint to making a great comedic film, and usually we are left with at best pale imitations of the great comedy that we all remember fondly or at worst an abomination of a film that would even make us question why we liked the original movie in the first place. So where does “22 Jump Street,” the sequel to the surprise comedy hit, fit on this spectrum of disappointing and sub par comedy sequels?

Well, nowhere really. If I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes and heard it with my own ears, I wouldn’t have believed that a comedy sequel could have been so funny and enjoyable and downright comparable to the original, but I DID see it, I DID hear it, and believe me when I tell you that I did laugh. And I laughed and I laughed, because “22 Jump Street” is damn funny front start to finish.Continue Reading …

Review: ‘The Signal’

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“The Signal” is a delightfully weird little sci-fi indie movie that has more than one trick up its sleeve, and while the story is lacking an emotional thread that ties all the twists and turns together, it is pretty well made and fun to watch unfold, like a Twilight Zone episode that just goes bonkers.

The story is centered on three college kids, Nic, Jonah and Haley. Nic and Haley are a couple, but their relationship is at a tough spot because not only are they taking a cross country trip from MIT to California to help Haley relocate for school, but Nic also has some sort of physical ailment which is making him lose the use of his legs and most likely other things as well. So he’s scared of what’s going to become of himself and he doesn’t want to be a burden on Haley. Meanwhile, Nic and Jonah are computer whiz kids who are in the midst of a game of a cat and mouse with a hacker named Nomad, and while on their cross country trip to take Haley to California, they find out where this Nomad character lives and decide to take a quick side trip to pay this person a visit.

And then things just go horribly wrong.Continue Reading …

Review: ‘Edge of Tomorrow’

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Welcome to the fun side of war. Well,  a sci-fi war against an alien threat involving a video game style restart mechanism that renders the specter of death, at least temporarily, into less of an unwanted state of (not) being and more of an asset which can be used to defeat the enemy in the most rad of ways (read: weaponized mech suit).

“Edge of Tomorrow” doesn’t want to tell us that war is bad, we know that war is bad, we’re not idiots, so instead “Edge of Tomorrow” embraces the war and the mayhem and the horrific numerous possibilities and turns it all into a romp of a summer blockbuster, into a (dare we say it) almost light film about the terror of war and the kind of guts and dedication and intensity it would take to get launched into such conditions and even dream about making it out alive, yet alone victorious.

War is indeed a force that gives us meaning, so when our main character Major William Cage (Tom Cruise) finds himself thrust onto the front lines of an invasion against an alien stronghold in Europe, his cowardice and lack of spine or discipline becomes readily apparent. When confronted with battle, he stumbles around like a lost child, someone’s sick joke writ large, as death and destruction literally rain down all around him (on a beach, by the way. In Normandy. Because you know…metaphors!), and really it is a miracle that the pathetic Cage even makes it as long as he does in the battle and manages to pull of what he can, and soon enough he dies a rather horrific death (which is saying something considering the ways people die all around him), but thanks to the exact manner of his death, something clicks and BOOM, Cage wakes up in the previous day, and finds himself having to re-live the same day or so, leading up the battle all over again. And he goes to war. And he dies. And he wakes up.Continue Reading …