Independence Day: Resurgence (2016)

Posted in2016, Action, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Sci-Fi, Theatrical

Id5

*/****
starring Liam Hemsworth, Jeff Goldblum, Bill Pullman, Maika Monroe
screenplay by Nicolas Wright & James A. Woods and Dean Devlin & Roland Emmerich and James Vanderbilt
directed by Roland Emmerich

by Walter Chaw About a third of the way through the slog of Independence Day: Resurgence (hereafter ID4.2), the hopelessly misguided and bellicose POTUS (Sela Ward), dressed smartly in a pantsuit with her hair pulled back in a severe-but-sensible bun, makes the first of a couple of really, really stupid mistakes before being executed off-screen by the alien scourge. And good riddance, for in her place rises man-of-action legacy POTUS Whitmore (Bill Pullman), suffering from some kind of alien-inflicted dementia but, you know, a man who hears voices and occasionally lapses into a coma is still better than a woman, amiright ‘murica? High five. There’s also a younger, less-demented POTUS on standby, Adams (William Fichtner), who is also obviously preferable to a woman. (High five.) There’s a heroic team of fighter pilots that reminds me a lot of the Thunderbirds or the Power Rangers (because there’s a Chinese one–the surprise is that her plane isn’t yellow), and then there’s Whitmore’s now-grown daughter Patricia (Maika Monroe), who gave up flying to care for her demented father but is back in the cockpit again, though she still needs her flyboy fiancé, roguish Jake (Liam Hemsworth), to save her in the end and she STILL almost shoots him because she’s scared and has a vagina. This is Roland Emmerich’s world. Try to keep up.

Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982) [Director’s Cut] – Blu-ray Disc

Posted in****/****, 1980s, 2016, Action, Adventure, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Vincent Suarez, Blu-ray Disc, FFC Must-Own, Sci-Fi, Star Trek

Khan1

****/**** Image A Sound A- Extras A
starring William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, DeForest Kelly, Ricardo Montalban
screenplay by Jack B. Sowards
directed by Nicholas Meyer

The film portion of this review comes from a piece originally published in July of 2000 that also critiqued the A/V quality of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan‘s very first DVD release. I opted not to repost Vincent’s comments on the DVD proper because they no longer seemed relevant, especially in this context.-BC

by Vincent Suarez Legend has it that, despite the popularity of television reruns and the stunning phenomenon of “Star Trek” conventions, Paramount green-lighted Star Trek: The Motion Picture only after the success of Star Wars, in an envious bid for a sci-fi blockbuster of its own. In the minds of many fans and critics, however, director Robert Wise delivered a film that more closely approximated Star Bores. (For the record, I love the film’s slow pace and its oft-neglected reprisal of themes from my favourite classic “Trek” episode, “The Changeling.”) While not the huge grosser the studio was hoping for, fans turned out in strong enough numbers to warrant a sequel, and a cash cow was born. There have since been eight additional films and three spun-off television series, but the most brilliant Trek effort remains that first sequel, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.

Zootopia (2016) – Blu-ray + DVD + Digital HD

Posted in2016, Action, Adventure, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Comedy, Crime, Disney, DVD, Family

Zootopia1

***/**** Image A Sound B+ Extras B
screenplay by Jared Bush & Phil Johnston
directed by Byron Howard, Rich Moore

by Walter Chaw Early on in Disney’s Zootopia, directed somehow by a triumvirate (Byron Howard, Rich Moore, Jared Bush) from a screenplay by Bush and Phil Johnston, a baby fox declares that it would like to grow up to be an elephant. It even has an elephant hoodie; the creature idolizes, it appears, elephant culture. It gets a laugh. It’s worth the conversation to wonder what about this is funny. At its essence, the idea that something could grow to be something else is funny. It’s also funny because it knowingly, gently pokes fun at our culture of “you can be anything you want to be,” the source of more sometimes-murderous disappointment than any other child-rearing strategy endemic to the West. Astronaut? No problem. And Zootopia opens on a children’s pageant where a little animal solemnly declares that where in primordial times he would have been predator or prey, in civilized times, he has the choice to maybe be an astronaut, or an accountant. The third way this is funny is harsher, in that it begins to touch on the truism that there are certain traits you’re born with, and while that’s a no-brainer when it comes to the rest of the animal kingdom, it’s a tough thing for most proud Judeo-Christians to accept. We have hardwiring, see, and accepting that means there are a lot of other things we need to accept as well, almost none of them politically correct and all of them fraught with delicate dancing around the issue. Zootopia is complicated as hell.

Warcraft (2016)

Posted in2016, Action, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Canada, China, Fantasy

Warcraft

**/****
starring Travis Fimmel, Paula Patton, Ben Foster, Dominic Cooper
written by Charles Leavitt and Duncan Jones
directed by Duncan Jones

by Walter Chaw A lot of it's a mess, and I'm well and truly disinterested at this point in huge-scale battles betwixt CGI armies, but enough of Duncan Jones's Warcraft is like Apocalypto to make it at least a fascinating misfire. It shares with Alex Proyas's instantly-derided Gods of Egypt this sense that but for the grace of God these are the exact kind of Ladyhawke/Clash of the Titans/Krull movies I used to love when I was a kid home from school with a fever. They're thick with invention and the sort of risk-taking that comes with not really having much shame. Their barometer for cheese and corn is broken, too. Warcraft is a picture without a sense that it shouldn't take itself seriously and so it takes itself very seriously, and there's one moment where the heroine of the piece talks about the strength she's gained from surviving repeated, and brutal, sexual assaults that actually cuts through the bullshit to the heart of some really troubling conversations. Particularly, pointedly, as it occurs in the middle of a narrative adaptation of a videogame whose culture is infamous for its intolerance of, and ideological violence towards, women. Warcraft earns points, too, for not being sentimental about its characters–for being another 2016 blockbuster that's unafraid of dealing with the consequences of forever wars on families and other non-combatants. Also, it occurs to me that if the humans had more gryffins, the war–and the movie–would be a lot shorter.

Zoolander No. 2 (2016) [The Magnum Edition] – Blu-ray + DVD + Digital HD

Posted in2016, Action, Adventure, Authors: Bill Chambers, Blu-ray Disc, Comedy, DVD

Zoolander21

Zoolander 2
**/**** Image A- Sound A Extras C
starring Ben Stiller, Owen Wilson, Will Ferrell, Penélope Cruz
written by Justin Theroux and John Hamburg & Ben Stiller and Nicholas Stoller
directed by Ben Stiller

by Bill Chambers It opens with Justin Bieber taking more bullets than Sonny Corleone. So far, so good. Bieber commemorates his death with an Instagram selfie, which makes me want to purse my lips against my fingertips and blow a kiss to the chef–mwah! News of Bieber’s assassination raises alarms at Fashion Interpol, where his death selfie is compared against those of several other musicians, all of whom died making the same pouty face as Bieber. (Madonna being among them strikes me as more of a production designer’s idea of a joke.) Struggling to decipher the meaning of the pose, Agent Valentina Valencia (Penélope Cruz) finally surrenders to the idea that there’s only one person who might have the insight she needs: Austin Powers! No, wait–Derek Zoolander (Ben Stiller)!

X-Men: Apocalypse (2016)

Posted in2016, Action, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Sci-Fi, Superhero, Theatrical

Xmen8

***½/****
starring James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Jennifer Lawrence, Oscar Isaac
screenplay by Simon Kinberg
directed by Bryan Singer

by Walter Chaw I know the sample size is small, but Bryan Singer’s X-Men prequel trilogy (we’ll call it his, since he produced Matthew Vaughn’s X-Men: First Class), culminating now in X-Men: Apocalypse, is the far superior prequel trilogy. If you were so inclined, you could find in them–and in all of Singer’s work (just like Victor Salva’s across the genre divide)–assimilation melodramas: tales of the struggle with being born different, complete with abilities and…urges. There’s explanation there of why Singer’s films are always about alienation, best when dealing with teens, and critical of the laws and systems that would condemn things that are natural as criminal. Matt Zoller Seitz recently wrote about the problem with believing that Woody Allen is likely a child abuser/pedophile and still watching, still sometimes enjoying, his movies. I was taken with how the stain of that knowledge on the viewer never really goes away. When I watch Singer’s work, which I tend to like a lot, never more than ten minutes go by without me wondering whether what people have said about him being a serial abuser and statutory rapist is true. If it is, it complicates this reading of his films. He’s a little like Elia Kazan in that respect; I wonder if their message is meant as apologia–if it’s repugnant in its human fascination.

The Nice Guys (2016)

Posted in2016, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Crime, Mystery, Theatrical, Thriller

Theniceguys

***½/****
starring Russell Crowe, Ryan Gosling, Matt Bomer, Kim Basinger
written by Shane Black & Anthony Bagarozzi
directed by Shane Black

by Walter Chaw Shane Black’s The Nice Guys is a delightful fusion of John D. MacDonald and Gregory McDonald; if it had a cover, it’d be painted by Robert McGinnis. It’s California noir, no doubt, the love child of The Long Goodbye and Inherent Vice, but with the flip social commentary and occasional bouts of ultra-violence found in Carl Hiaasen’s Florida noirs. Sufficed to say that Black, who’s often spoken of his love for crime fiction, has distilled pulp here and with his directorial debut Kiss Kiss Bang Bang into breezy, post-modern concoctions. The Nice Guys is as smart as it is inconsequential, as brutal and exploitive as it is a commentary on brutality and exploitation. More than anything else, it’s a very fine critical pastiche of the kinds of books you read in an afternoon because they’re thrilling, socially irresponsible, and afire with misogyny, nihilism, and Byronic macho bullshit Romanticism. But cool, baby, and stylish.

Captain America: Civil War (2016)

Posted in2016, Action, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Scarlett Johansson, Sci-Fi, Superhero, Theatrical, Thriller

Cap3

**½/****
starring Chris Evans, Robert Downey Jr., Scarlett Johansson, Daniel Brühl
screenplay by Christopher Markus & Stephen McFeely
directed by Anthony and Joe Russo

by Walter Chaw The Russo brothers’ Captain America: Civil War (hereafter Cap 3), better titled “Captain America: Gosh, That’s a Lot of Characters” or “Captain America: Spider-Man,” is an hour of dull exposition, an hour of fanboy service, and an absolutely fantastic half-hour of Spider-Man (Tom Holland). It continues storylines of which I have no memory while giving more and better time to women characters after the kafuffle around sterilizing Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson) in Avengers 2: Gosh, That’s a Lot of Characters, thus making her a “monster.” Chief benefactor of that largesse is Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth Olsen), “Wanda” to her friends (not only are there too many characters–most of them have two names), who struggles through a fetishist’s idea of a Russian accent and carries the introspective weight of the 2010s on her shoulders. The film is about two things: Like Batman v Superman: 9/11 Has Made Us Monsters, it’s about the casualties of superpowers waging war with one another over civilian populations; and it’s about the role of Western determinism in our current state. It’s like Skyfall in that way, positing that the West has a moral responsibility to police the rest of the world, whether the rest of the world would like to be policed or not. It’s a theory that only works if the West holds fast to its evergreen ideals of truth and justice. This is different from the solipsistic, Byronic nihilism of BvS, because the character of Captain America (Chris Evans) is so explicitly child-like in his goodness that he becomes the manifestation of an idea every action in the film either runs in conjunction with or in tension against. Superman, too, should have represented that ideal, but alas, on Zack Snyder’s watch, he’s just another emo Spidey.

Sonny Boy (1989) – Blu-ray Disc

Posted in1990s, 2016, Action, Authors: Bryant Frazer, Blu-ray Disc, Drama, Esoterica, Scream/Shout! Factory, Thriller

Sonnyboy1

**½/**** Image B+ Sound B+ Extras B
starring David Carradine, Paul L. Smith, Brad Dourif, Michael Griffin
original screenplay by Graeme Whifler
directed by Robert Martin Carroll

by Bryant Frazer David Carradine wears a dress and nobody says a word about it for the duration of Sonny Boy, a low-budget thriller set in a timeless Panavision desert where the preferred modes of transportation are dirt bikes and dusty pickup trucks. It eschews mainstream cultural signifiers–the one glaring exception is the blonde with tousled music-video hair and ridiculous outfits straight out of Desperately Seeking Susan–and instead dedicates itself to world-building, making its arid small-town environment a microcosm for the cold world outside. So complete is Sonny Boy‘s conception of a cruel universe in miniature that it comes with a downbeat theme song written and performed, right there on screen, by Carradine himself. (A lyric from said song* is engraved, I kid you not, on Carradine’s tombstone.) Carradine is the big name, but the whole cast is better than it needs to be, and that makes a difference. They add a recognizably human element to an otherwise demented scenario and, even more importantly, they keep a film that sometimes feels almost like outsider art from amplifying its self-conscious idiosyncrasies to the point of out-and-out parody.

The Huntsman: Winter’s War (2016)

Posted in2016, Action, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, Fantasy, Theatrical

Huntsman2

*/****
starring Chris Hemsworth, Charlize Theron, Emily Blunt, Jessica Chastain
written by Evan Spiliotopoulos and Craig Mazin
directed by Cedric Nicolas-Troyan

by Walter Chaw It’s not offensive, or provocative, or particularly funny, or especially exciting. It doesn’t do anything very well, but neither does it do anything very poorly. It has a ridiculously overqualified cast game for anything in the way that good sports are when engaged in a losing battle against poor pacing and essential silliness; frankly, I don’t have anything against silliness per se. In that spirit, Cedric Nicolas-Troyan’s The Huntsman: Winter’s War (hereafter Huntsman 2) reminds a lot of pleasant disasters like Ladyhawke and Krull, with its biggest crime maybe being that it’s not ridiculous enough, given how the fantastic commitment of Charlize Theron, reprising her role from the previous film (which I’m sure I saw and probably reviewed), seems ultimately squandered. A shame that she’s in the movie for about five minutes, spending some of that as a CGI phantom and a lot of that screaming. It’s telling that she still manages to be the most interesting thing in it.

Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015) – Blu-ray + DVD + DigitalHD

Posted in2015, 2016, Action, Adventure, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, DVD, Sci-Fi, Star Wars

Starwars2

Star Wars: Episode VII – The Force Awakens
***½/**** Image A Sound A Extras B
starring Harrison Ford, Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher, Max Von Sydow
written by Lawrence Kasdan & J.J. Abrams and Michael Arndt
directed by J.J. Abrams

by Walter Chaw I was four when I saw Star Wars. It was the first time I’d seen a film in a theatre; it was the first film I’d seen, period. I didn’t speak a word of English. It was overwhelming, and I’m discovering, after watching J.J. Abrams’s Star Wars: The Force Awakens (hereafter Star Wars 7), that it imprinted itself on my DNA. Thirty-eight years later, I collect the toys my parents couldn’t afford to buy me when I was a kid–the ones I played with at friends’ houses, when I pretended to be Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) as a child of immigrants doing his best to fit into a society that promised blond and blue-eyed messiahs. My office is full of these toys. They are fetishized relics for me. I hold them and they possess a totemic value. The curve of a molded plastic stormtrooper’s helmet reminds me of the department store where I looked at it through the packaging–and of my delight at my mom one day buying me one, which I opened on the way home in the backseat of the family car.

Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016)

Posted in2016, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, Superhero, Theatrical

Batmanvsuperman

**/****
starring Ben Affleck, Henry Cavill, Amy Adams, Jesse Eisenberg
written by Chris Terrio and David S. Goyer
directed by Zack Snyder

by Walter Chaw This is what I know: that the first time I saw Kinji Fukasaku’s Battle Royale, a friend had to acquire it from some disreputable dealer and send it to me, unmarked, in a brown box. When I watched it, I thought to myself that the United States would never suffer something like this in the popular conversation. Not long after 9/11, The Hunger Games became a YA phenomenon capped with a run of blockbuster adaptations. I know that immediately after 9/11, witnesses on the scene could only compare it to something they would have seen in a movie. I know that the United States started remaking the nihilistic horror films that Japan had been churning out for decades, and I know that this is because after 9/11, we became the second modern, industrialized nation to experience the effects of weapons of mass destruction detonated over a civilian area. The other thing we had in common is the arrogance to believe that something about our island status left us immune to that type of offense; I know that most other nations on the planet don’t live under any such illusions. If we accept the premise that film, as all art, is sociology and history, then 9/11 is the inciting event that brought us closer as a culture, cinematically, to Japan. The myth of indomitability, whether it be that your Emperor is the descendant of the “living god” (rescinded in 1946 at the request of Supreme Commander Douglas MacArthur) or that you are the island “nation” of Manhattan and your priapic symbols of financial power stood as gatekeepers to the world, suddenly dispelled by an alien power. Poof. Justlikethat. And suddenly you’re a citizen of a different place where gods are capricious and maybe not on your side, and terrible things happen for no reason. The world didn’t get more dangerous, the mainland just lost its virginity.

Allegiant (2016)

Posted in2016, Action, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Mystery, Sci-Fi, Teen, Theatrical, Thriller

Allegiant

The Divergent Series: Allegiant
½*/****
starring Shailene Woodley, Theo James, Jeff Daniels, Naomi Watts
screenplay by Noah Oppenheim and Adam Cooper & Bill Collage
directed by Robert Schwentke

by Walter Chaw Remember those gauzy, halcyon days of youth spent playing “imagination” with your buddies on the schoolyard? Starting nowhere, ending nowhere, structureless? Child-development gurus would say something about how formless mucking-about is the way we first begin to socialize. Dungeons & Dragons made it into something like a communal form of spontaneous storytelling while offering a degree of gameplay and structure. Now Allegiant–the third or fourth (who knows?) film in the Divergent series, based on the third- or fourth-generation YA spin-off trying to capitalize on the Hunger Games-cum-Twilight phenomenon of smushing sci-fi/fantasy together with tween angst–has arrived to make manifest the endless exposition of developmental social psychology. In this one, Tris (Shailene Woodley, with her constantly-surprised blankness) and Four (Theo James) find themselves in a dystopian Chicago, I think, except that later they’re taken to a place I believe is also Chicago, or at least Future O’Hare, thus as the characters repeatedly referred to “going to” Chicago, I was never for a moment not confused. I even checked Wikipedia, which confirmed for me that O’Hare is in Chicago. It is. Over the last few movies, which I’ve seen but don’t remember except as a confusion of several franchises identical in my mind, Tris and Four have apparently discovered they’re pawns in a game–A GAME, I tell you–involving their genes. THEIR GENES. It’s Aldous Huxley, don’t you get it?

In the Heart of the Sea (2015) – Blu-ray + DVD + Digital HD

In the Heart of the Sea (2015) – Blu-ray + DVD + Digital HD

Posted in2015, 2016, Action, Adventure, Authors: Bill Chambers, Blu-ray Disc, Disaster Movie, Drama, DVD

*/**** Image A- Sound A+ Extras B+
starring Chris Hemsworth, Benjamin Walker, Cillian Murphy, Brendan Gleeson
screenplay by Charles Leavitt, based on the book In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex by Nathaniel Philbrick
directed by Ron Howard

by Bill Chambers In the Heart of the Sea is Ron Howard’s water movie, just like Backdraft is his fire movie, Far and Away is his earth movie, and Apollo 13 is his air movie. It’s also his first fish movie since Splash, suggesting that Howard is retracing his steps in a career reboot that began with Rush, his first car movie since his directorial debut, Grand Theft Auto. But one waits for history to repeat itself with some sign of accrued wisdom beyond obvious markers like technical proficiency. In fact, in its show-off-iness and ersatz emotionalism, In the Heart of the Sea seems the less mature film next to Splash, which has a formal self-control and hints of real pathos despite a fantastical premise that sees a landlubber falling in love with a woman who’s secretly a mermaid. (It’s the first film to seize on Tom Hanks’s Jimmy Stewart quality, as well as the rare one to tap into his anger.) There’s hardly a genuine moment in In the Heart of the Sea, and a framing device only exacerbates the problem by adding another layer of dramatization to something that already plays like a big-budget History Channel re-enactment.

Zootopia (2016)

Posted in2016, Action, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Disney, Theatrical

Zootopia

***/****
screenplay by Jared Bush & Phil Johnston
directed by Byron Howard, Rich Moore, Jared Bush

by Walter Chaw Early on in Disney’s Zootopia, directed somehow by a triumvirate (Byron Howard, Rich Moore, Jared Bush) from a screenplay by Bush and Phil Johnston, a baby fox declares that it would like to grow up to be an elephant. It even has an elephant hoodie; the creature idolizes, it appears, elephant culture. It gets a laugh. It’s worth the conversation to wonder what about this is funny. At its essence, the idea that something could grow to be something else is funny. It’s also funny because it knowingly, gently pokes fun at our culture of “you can be anything you want to be,” the source of more sometimes-murderous disappointment than any other child-rearing strategy endemic to the West. Astronaut? No problem. And Zootopia opens on a children’s pageant where a little animal solemnly declares that where in primordial times he would have been predator or prey, in civilized times, he has the choice to maybe be an astronaut, or an accountant. The third way this is funny is harsher, in that it begins to touch on the truism that there are certain traits you’re born with, and while that’s a no-brainer when it comes to the rest of the animal kingdom, it’s a tough thing for most proud Judeo-Christians to accept. We have hardwiring, see, and accepting that means there are a lot of other things we need to accept as well, almost none of them politically correct and all of them fraught with delicate dancing around the issue. Zootopia is complicated as hell.

Deadpool (2016)

Posted in2016, Action, Adventure, Comedy, Sci-Fi, Superhero, Theatrical

Deadpool

**/****
starring Ryan Reynolds, Morena Baccarin, T.J. Miller, Gina Carano
screenplay by Rhett Reese & Paul Wernick
directed by Tim Miller

by Walter Chaw I get it. Deadpool is post-modern. It's absolutely aware of itself. It's The Cabin in the Woods. The primogenitor of Deadpool is Dennis Miller's '90s standup: sneering, smarmy, arch, and peppered with pop-culture references running the gamut from Ferris Bueller to Limp Bizkit to the fact that there are two Professor X's in Fox's X-Men franchise. Carted off to stand before the beloved X-Man, Deadpool (Ryan Reynolds) asks, "McAvoy or Stewart?" And an audience of savvy comic-book/film fans cheers because they've been recognized. It's the button rock stars push when they say, "Hello (wherever they are)!" at the beginning of a set. It announces that they are aware of the space they occupy, and legions of concertgoers make the devil horns and light their lighters in appreciation: "Yeah, man, you're here. In that you are correct." Deadpool is about recognizing itself for what it is and recognizing its audience for recognizing where they are (which is there, recognizing that their hero recognizes where he is). When Deadpool's alter ego, being wheeled into the place where he's going to be turned into Deadpool, begs them not to give him an animated green suit, well, you knew that Reynolds was disastrously the hero in Green Lantern, right? It's only the second time it's referenced. He also calls a little bald girl Sinead O'Connor twice, because it's hard to write jokes. He could have called her "Blue Sunshine," except the only thing Deadpool can't afford to be is smarter than its audience. Relax–it never is.

The Dungeonmaster (1984)/Eliminators (1986) [Double Feature] – Blu-ray Disc

Posted in1980s, 2016, Action, Adventure, Authors: Bryant Frazer, Blu-ray Disc, Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Scream/Shout! Factory, Thriller, Zombie

Dungeonmaster1

Ragewar
*½/**** Image B+ Sound B Extras C+
starring Richard Moll, Leslie Wing, Jeffrey Byron
written by Allen Actor
directed by Rosemarie Turko, John Carl Buechler, David Allen, Steven Ford, Peter Manoogian, Ted Nicolaou, Charles Band

ELIMINATORS
**½/**** Image B Sound B+ Extras C+
starring Andrew Prine, Denise Crosby, Patrick Reynolds, Roy Dotrice
written by Paul De Meo & Danny Bilson
directed by Peter Manoogian

by Bryant Frazer Shout! Factory’s program of disinterred but well-preserved artifacts from producer Charles Band’s genre-flick factory Empire Pictures continues with this platter of aged cheese. I’m generally resistant to nostalgia and suspicious of claims that anybody’s low-budget crapfest is so bad it’s good, but the twofer on offer here is surprisingly engaging, juxtaposing a sloppy but fast-paced horror anthology with a silly but earnest action pastiche in a celebration of a bygone age of guileless indie filmmaking. While some of Scream Factory’s excavations from that era are simply depressing (The Final Terror, anyone?), this highly-derivative double feature makes up for its lack of artistry with a generous helping of vintage latex creature masks, boggling non sequiturs, and 1980s signifiers that generate–at least for movie buffs of a certain age and proclivity–a strong sense memory of sticky floors, stale popcorn, and battered 35mm projection.

The Finest Hours (2016)

Posted in2016, Action, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, Theatrical, Thriller

Finesthours

*½/****
starring Chris Pine, Casey Affleck, Ben Foster, Eric Bana
screenplay by Scott Silver and Paul Tamasy & Eric Johnson, based on the book by Casey Sherman and Michael J. Tougias
directed by Craig Gillespie

by Walter Chaw Craig Gillespie makes a play to be the new Ron Howard by not only following up Ron Howard’s waterlogged maritime tale of dashing Captain Handsome and his feats of historical derring-do with his own, but also studiously crafting bland, empty, crowd-pleasing, middlebrow gruel for the sedate appreciation of people who are almost dead. Gillespie’s is The Finest Hours, the tale of a heroic small-boat Coast Guard rescue in 1951 off the coast of Nantucket that sees four really boring white guys putting out during a storm to save thirty waterlogged oil-tanker guys. The Finest Hours never for a moment made me not think of that SNL sketch where Mark Wahlberg asks a goat if it’s seen A Perfect Storm–which admittedly is not the worst thing that a film hasn’t been able to make me not think about.

Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015)

Posted in2015, Action, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Sci-Fi, Star Wars, Theatrical

Forceawakens

***½/****
starring Harrison Ford, Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher, Max Von Sydow
written by Lawrence Kasdan & J.J. Abrams and Michael Arndt
directed by J.J. Abrams

by Walter Chaw I was four when I saw Star Wars. It was the first time I’d seen a film in a theatre; it was the first film I’d seen, period. I didn’t speak a word of English. It was overwhelming, and I’m discovering, after watching J.J. Abrams’s Star Wars: The Force Awakens (hereafter Star Wars 7), that it imprinted itself on my DNA. Thirty-eight years later, I collect the toys my parents couldn’t afford to buy me when I was a kid–the ones I played with at friends’ houses, when I pretended to be Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) as a child of immigrants doing his best to fit into a society that promised blond and blue-eyed messiahs. My office is full of these toys. They are fetishized relics for me. I hold them and they possess a totemic value. The curve of a molded plastic stormtrooper’s helmet reminds me of the department store where I looked at it through the packaging–and of my delight at my mom one day buying me one, which I opened on the way home in the backseat of the family car.

Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation (2015) – Blu-ray + DVD + Digital HD

Posted in2015, Action, Adventure, Austria, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, China, DVD, Espionage, Hong Kong, Morocco, Thriller, Tom Cruise, UK

Roguenationblu1

***½/**** Image A Sound A+ Extras B+
starring Tom Cruise, Jeremy Renner, Simon Pegg, Alec Baldwin
screenplay by Christopher McQuarrie
directed by Christopher McQuarrie

by Walter Chaw At some point, sneakily, wonderfully, Tom Cruise became our Jackie Chan. It happened when the storyline shifted away from his essential ickiness–the Scientology thing, the Katie Holmes thing, and all the attendant nightmare gossip–and onto his fearlessness and absolute willingness to perform his own stunts wherever possible. (I realize of course that said storyline may never shift for some.) There were murmurs when he did the rock-climbing in the second Mission: Impossible flick–the one where he recruited John Woo, who was at the time the best action director on the planet. Those murmurs turned to grudging admiration once it was revealed that Cruise let himself be suspended for real outside the Burj Khalifa in Brad Bird’s superior Ghost Protocol; and now, with Christopher McQuarrie’s fleet, intelligent, immanently professional Rogue Nation, for which Cruise hung from an airplane in flight and held his breath for six minutes, Cruise’s bravado is a big part of the draw.