Fantastic Four (2015)

Fantastic Four (2015)

Director: Josh Trank

Cast: Miles Teller, Michael B. Jordan, Kate Mara, Jamie Bell, Toby Kebbell

To hate or not to hate the new Fantastic Four, that is the question. Fantastic Four, I knew them well Horatio, or as well as I was going to know them, cause this is another franchise that Hollywood just can’t seem to get right. What the hell? How hard can it be? What keeps getting in the way of making a good Fantastic Four movie over at 20^th Century Fox? Well, for one, they have a habit of rushing a project so they won’t lose the rights to it. This nasty habit is really getting on my nerves because the results are half assed movies that are made in a rush to compete with the contracts dead line. They did it with The Amazing Spider-Man (2012) and they’ve done it again with The Fantastic Four (2015). But let’s put things in perspective, this project was doomed from the very beginning, first up, nowadays, people only want their Marvel movies to come from Disney/Marvel; they don’t want Marvel from 20th Century Fox. If it isn’t purely Marvel, it’s a twisted, mutant half breed that no one wants. So the guys making this Fantastic Four movie had that to work against. They also had behind the scenes drama, and once the public gets a whiff that a production is muddled by production woes, well, it becomes tainted. Audiences lose their confidence in the project and usually it tanks. Look at what happened with Terminator: Salvation (2009), people heard about the behind the scenes squabbles between Christian Bale and the film’s director and boom, the film tanks at the box office. There was certainly an air of doom over this new Fantastic Four film, what was going to be the ultimate fate for this reboot?

Well, the film gods have spoken and they have deemed this reboot unworthy. Not me, I actually enjoyed it and kept telling myself throughout the films running time “this isn’t that bad!” It’s an origin story and it flows like one. Like so few movies today, this new Fantastic Four film starts out by taking its time to tell its story, to flesh out its characters; it gives us time to get to know them. Unfortunately, the film becomes a rushed job somewhere around its second half; suddenly the film is in this rush to tell everything. So anyhow, following the formula of an origin tale, we don’t get the full blown version of the Fantastic Four until the very end, when they finally learn that they can use their powers collectively to beat the villain. And I’m fine with that; this is the film where they discover who they’ve become. It handled that well I think. People are bitching and moaning because supposedly it doesn’t have action, yet I thought the film has the same beats and amounts of action that any super hero film has. This movie was no different than any other origin tale, and maybe that’s where the film falters. It’s formulaic. It goes through all those beats that an origin story must go through. Characters get powers, they don’t know how to use them well, they learn, then they beat the villain; in that order.  So I’d say that you shouldn’t expect anything ground breaking in terms of story development, you might find yourself predicting events.

It seems to me Josh Trank wanted a serious, dark version of the super hero movie, whereas 20^th Century Fox wanted something that was accessible to the whole family. So the film is uneven in tone in that sense, so we get dark visuals accompanied by simplistic dialog, which is really where the film fails for me. It wasn’t the fact that Ben Grimm wasn’t wearing spandex undies and boots, it wasn’t changing the characters ethnicities that rattled my bones and it wasn’t this films version of Dr. Doom that grated me, it was that god awful simplistic dialog that makes the characters sound like 12 year olds. But I let it go because I guess they were marketing the film primarily with that target audience in mind. Which is yet another problem because if the film has simplistic dialog put in there so kids won’t get “lost” with the film, then why do we have a Dr. Doom exploding various bodies and heads with telekinetic powers? Why is it that when the characters discover their powers the film feels like a horror movie? Not that I mind that stuff, that bloody violence was a cool touch in my book, it made things a bit more menacing, but in a film that’s clearly made with a younger audience in mind, it just felt a bit out of place. But I will say this, I saw the movie accompanied by a 5 year old and to my surprise he was glued to the screen, didn’t fall asleep for a second. So for those who say this movie is boring…I beg to differ. Shoot me, I liked all the dimension traveling stuff, the machines, the sound effects. It was cool sci-fi territory in my book.

It’s true, you do feel, especially on the films second half, that things aren’t flowing properly and I’m willing to bet that this is where the studio interfered the most. And it’s not that it was slow, it’s more like there are bits and pieces of the story that weren’t filmed, or were excised all together. Hell, one look at the trailers and you’ll see a fare share of scenes that were completely eliminated from the film. You’ll feel like things are happening way to fast, suddenly its see you later Dr. Doom and while it was all a tasty cgi spectacle, superior to the fight the Fantastic Four had with Dr. Doom in Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer (2007), it does feel like a rushed job, like a last minute attempt to wow us and send us home happy. But today’s audiences are savvy, and they know when they are being cheated out of a proper comic book film. Still, through the mess, there are glimmers of a good film that shine through. For example, while a lot of people are complaining about Dr. Doom not looking like their beloved man in the Iron Mask, I still enjoyed this version of Doom with green eyes and telekinetic abilities. There’s this moment where Doom goes all Akira and starts blowing up people’s heads with the power of his mind and to me that was just, well, really cool, what can I say. It proves that Josh Trank still has a hard on for making an Akira movie. Sadly, after this fiasco, I doubt he’ll get to make another big budget summer flick, if he does it will be some sort of Hollywood miracle, that or Trank has connections.

Sure Fantastic Four is not a great comic book film, especially when we take in consideration that it was a troubled production because of the animosity between the studio and director. The director of this film is Josh Trank, the guy who made Chronicle (2012) which in my book was a damn fine movie, so underrated, which makes me wonder what the hell happened here, something wasn’t working properly that’s for sure. There was definitely a disturbance in the force. If anything, what this new Fantastic Four film demonstrates is how a director works best when given complete artistic reign over a project. Trank had that when he made Chronicle, which was a smaller production, with less studio pressure and the result was a great science fiction film. It’s a different story when you play with the big boys.  If you can’t take the heat, get out of that kitchen kid! Apparently, Josh Trank just couldn’t take the heat; he even went as far as disowning the film on Tweeter stating that he had a good film planned out a year ago, and that the one we’re getting in theaters just isn’t it. Dude, that’s like shooting down your film! If the film had any chances of recovering its budget due to audience curiosity, that comment you posted just shot those chances to hell.

Trank says that the studio interfered, that they messed with his vision, followed by a “that’s the truth though” Meaning, he’s trying to be honest, sadly, Trank’s probably burned a couple of bridges down in Hollywood. It looks to me that after posting comments like those on social media, we won’t be seeing any more films directed by Mr. Trank any time soon, and that’s some truth right there as well. New filmmakers must remember that when you make this type of big budget studio film, you have to play ball.  You have to know that commercial filmmaking is a fine juggling act between making a marketable film the studio can sell (and make hefty profits from) and satisfying yourself as an artist. If you go full blown “I am an artist, this is MY film and fuck you studio guys!”  Well, you’re not going to get very far in this business, and yes it is a business. When making this type of Geronimo picture, the filmmaker must remember they are making a film for the studio, you are hired by them, they are the boss of you during the whole production.  Remember kids, commercial filmmaking is 50 percent art and 50 percent business; one can’t go without the other.  And you have to be a professional, not a 12 year old kid with a hissy fit. Still, it seems to me people are on a hive like mentality with this one, they are not even giving it a chance, which is sad because at the very least, this film is a million times better then Fantastic Four (2005) and Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer (2007) combined, which is an achievement in my book. My hatred for those Tim Story Fantastic Four films knew no boundaries! I certainly hate them more than this one. Bottom line, this isn’t a perfect film but I’ve seen far worse. Twentieth Century Fox has just stated that they are not giving up on this franchise, even though this film has flopped hard at the box office. Of course they are not going to let go of it, it’s a cash cow just like the Spider Man or X-Men franchises, unfortunately, Fantastic Four is a cash cow that 20^thCentury Fox hasn’t figured out how to milk properly. 

Rating: 2 out of 5

Pixels (2015)

Pixels (2015)

Director: Chris Columbus

Cast: Adam Sandler, Kevin James, Michelle Monaghan, Peter Dinklage, Josh Gad, Brian Cox, Sean Bean, Dan Aykroyd

Currently, it feels as if people are programmed to hate any Adam Sandler film released, even without having seen it. They’re prerogative is that Adam Sandler no longer makes “good movies”. Nowadays, you can’t read a review for an Adam Sandler film without it centering around how much Sandler sucks now and how he hasn’t made a good movie in eons and blah, blah, blah. I’m not into hating for hates sake, which is what is apparently happening with Sandler, it’s this hive like mentality of hatred towards Sandler. Where does the hatred stem from? Probably from the string of bad movies he’s been making. The last torturous one I saw was Jack and Jill (2011) and that one turned me off from seeing Sandler movies. How did I end up seeing that one in theaters you might ask? Well, I like to give movies the benefit of the doubt, sometimes I come out a winner and discover a film I would have not seen otherwise, but other times, like with Jack and Jill it’s just like“WHYYYYY?!” The way I see it and in Sandler’s defense I will say that we can’t really blame Sandler for making bland family movies, because that’s who he is, he’s the all encompassing actor who makes films that are supposed to appeal to everyone. He’s movies are made to be consumed in mass quantities and in order to do that, the film has to be a certain way. They can’t be too intense, or bloody, or offensive or violent, they gotta have that ‘feel good, nothing bad is going to happen’ vibe to them. Like, don’t take nothing to seriously, you’re here just to have some fun. Let’s just accept that he’s the guy who makes that type of film, that’s who he’s become. He’s gone the way of Eddie Murphy, but in a successful way? My advice is, if you don’t like the crappy pappy movies that Sandler makes, don’t go and see them! Just wait until he works with a good director, gets critical acclaim again and makes something like Punch Drunk Love (2002), his only truly good film if you ask me.

So just how squeaky clean is Pixels? Well, just by way of an example, in one scene when Sandler sees Pac-Man eat the hand of his creator, and Sandler he says “that was some weird….stuff” instead of “That was some weird…shit!” He even pauses before saying ‘stuff’ as if mentally correcting himself saying “nope, gotta keep it PG-13!” But whatever man, you can say “shit” in a PG-13 movie, it’s just that you’re so self censored that you can’t even bring yourself to say shit. The most basic of cusses. It feels as if Sandler is in a censored state of mind even as he films, in other words, no real space to cut loose and go crazy. Feels like there’s no improv and if you have a good comedian on your film, usually that’s where comedy gold is at, the improv. But no, dialog here is clean as a whistle, god forbid word of mouth spreads and a mother ends up saying something like “my kid is not going to see that nasty Adam Sandler movie, he’s always cussing”. So following Sandler’s squeaky clean movie rules, the film will have kids and families, often times dysfunctional families facing problems and overcoming them (like a divorce for example) and Sandler will be sympathetic and kind to the kid in the movie because that’s the target audience. So this is the kind of movie you can expect my friends. A film following a formula every step of the way. Nothing is to be taken too seriously; you can’t invest yourself emotionally because you know nobody will die. Not in a squeaky clean Adam Sandler family movie like this one, so just sit back and watch the fireworks, which is really the only thing that this movie is good for.

Some folks seem to think that this film was based on an episode of Futurama that has a similar premise, but in reality, this film is based on a French short film that lasts only about 2 ½ minutes, it is also called Pixels (which you can see here) and it sets the ground rules for the look and the mechanics of the’ video games come to life’ part of the film. The short makes no sense or meaning, it just shows us a guy putting an old television in the garbage and suddenly from said television all these old video games emerge. Suddenly Donkey Kong is on top of the Empire State building throwing barrels, Pac Man is eating street cars and Centipedes fly through the skies. In the short, the video game characters destroy the city by turning everything they touch into square little pixels, but that’s about as far as the thing goes. It has no story, no villains, no heroes, just a concept which Chris Columbus and Adam Sandler ran with and stretched into a film. And I say stretched because that’s what they did, the films premise is so simple, the story so non-existent, the characters so one note that they had to stretch things out. Pixels feels  repetitive and one note; we fight one video game, beat it, then fight the next one, and they go on and on like this till the end. There’s nothing unexpected here, this is as formulaic as it gets. Worst part? This is the kind of movie in which the trailer has shown you everything. If you’ve seen the trailer, then you know, step by step how this movie is going to go.

What this movie is though is a nostalgia bomb. If you were born in the 80’s and played video games in arcades the way I did, you will feel a shot of nostalgia in your system. I have to admit it was cool seeing a giant Pac-Man eating up taxi cabs and city streets, especially since I’m such a Pac-Man nut! It was awesome seeing a giant King Kong throwing barrels at Adam Sandler, and then there’s this scene where they simply throw as many old video game characters on the screen as they can, so you’ll see Frogger, Q-bert, Paperboy, Centipede, Galaga, Space Invaders…and that’s without counting all the other characters from 80’s pop culture that show up in the film like Max Headroom, Ronald Reagan, Madonna and Hall & Oates. The soundtrack is made up of hits from the 80’s all the way. So in this sense, the movie proves entertaining to an extent, you will be like “Oh there’s Q-Bert!” Still, I think they could have used even more classic video game characters on the film, apparently they could only afford to use a limited amount of characters. Where was the knight from Ghosts and Goblins? Sadly, the novelty of seeing old video game characters on screen is the only thing this film has to offer, the movie itself is just a bunch of empty calories starting by the fact that the villains in this movie are faceless, we never really know who they are because they talk through videogame characters. So suddenly, our favorite old school video games are evil. I mean, I never saw Pac-Man as a bad guy? But there he is eating people up! So yeah, this is yet another film with a weak villain whom we never even get to meet. Pixels is extremely simple and banal that’s all I can say.

Chris Columbus directs this film and it's sad to see him directing such a simplistic film, considering he's actually done decent family films like Home Alone and Home Alone 2, hell this is the guy who wrote Gremlins (1984) and freaking The Goonies (1985)! I would have liked something from Columbus with a little more story put into it, instead the whole film runs on a gag, not really even trying to get us invested. Pixel does have its moments, again, mostly its moments are associated with the appearance of the giant video game characters, but where’s the comedy? It’s not here; Pixels feels like they are not even really trying. I mean, you got all these good actors and comedians in your movie, why not have them throw in some of their own personality, let them improvise, let them put a little of their soul into the proceedings. This is the reason why Ghostbusters (1984) worked so well, it had a lot of Bill Murray and Dan Aykroyd in it, it’s their personalities that bring those characters to life. In contrast, on Pixels Sandler seems to have no personality, he’s got this spaced out, bored look on his face all the time? Like he doesn’t even want to speak? He’s so laid back that he comes of as lifeless. So yeah, I get why people hate on Sandler so much, he’s just not doing anything relevant lately, I hope he gets his mojo back at some point. Still, Pixels isn’t terrible, it’s completely watchable, just not very engaging or hilarious. It’s simply put a very average film. But hey, there’s Frogger jumping and smashing a car into pieces! Cool!

Rating: 2 out of 5 

Ex-Machina (2015)

Ex-Machina (2015)

Director: Alex Garland

Cast: Domhnall Gleeson, Oscar Isaac, Alicia Vikander, Sonoya Mizuno    

Screenwriters are the firsts to bring a film to life, in their minds they see the story unfold in a certain way, down the road of a films production, it's their words and ideas that become the blueprint of a film. Which is why it doesn’t surprise me that some writers feel the urge to sit on the director’s chair and film their story themselves. The problem with this is that sometimes, while a writer might be great at coming up with stories and dialog, they don’t understand the mechanics of properly translating their words into an entertaining and visually interesting film. For example, when David S. Goyer, the screenwriter behind such heavy weight Hollywood blockbusters like The Dark Knight Rises (2012), Man of Steel (2013) and Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016) decided to sit on the director’s chair, he ended up making horrible stinkers like Blade Trinity (2004) and The Unborn (2009). Another good example would be Frank Miller, a good writer that ended up directing The Spirit (2008), one of the worst comic book films ever made. This is why whenever a writer wants to direct, I go into the film with a little trepidation. In the case of Ex-Machina, we’re talking about Alex Garland, a writer who frequently collaborates with renowned director Danny Boyle. Garland wroteThe Beach (2000), 28 Days Later (2002) and Sunshine (2007), all directed by Boyle. He recently wrote Dredd (2012), a good Judge Dredd film that needed to be just a little more epic in order to succeed. So in my book Garland has a pretty solid slate as a writer. In Ex-Machina Garland both writes and directs, did he pull off this double punch successfully?

Since this film comes to us from a true blue writer, and a good one, we should expect a film that’s brainier than your usual film. Why? Well, this isn’t Garland writing a film for someone else, this is Garland writing and directing a film that plays with themes that he finds interesting. And they are pretty heavy themes, Ex-Machina as the title suggests, is a very existential film. The title ‘Ex-Machina’ is an allusion to the term ‘Deus Ex-Machina’ a term used in Greek theater for whenever there was a problem too big to be resolved by the protagonists. Whenever this happened, they would lower a god onto the stage through the use of machinery, the god would then proceed to magically solve the problems the main characters were suffering from. The term literally means God is a Machine. The term is used even today in both theater and films to refer to a miracle solution for a any given problem in a story. In Ex-Machina the problem is AVA, the first android to ever be created. AVA has extremely advanced artificial intelligence which allows her to talk and think like a human, she can even make her own choices. AVA’s creator, Nathan, wants to test her in order to evaluate her human capabilities. In order to do this Nathan hand picks one of his own employees, a young computer programmer named Caleb. Will AVA pass Caleb’s evaluation?

This is a simple premise for a film with deep themes. Garland has always explored deep themes in his films, one example would be Sunshine (2007), a science fiction film that manages to turn into an exploration of human behavior, religion and how it can twist the human mind. That movie was basically about science vs. religion. So it didn’t surprise when Ex-Machina suddenly started tackling heady themes.  It starts out right away by giving the role of God to Nathan, AVA’s creator. By all intents and purposes a rightful title because after all, Nathan is the creator of artificial life, the father of a sentient being that is alive and capable of making its own choices. So in many ways, this film is a mirror of us and of whoever made us of God, or our parents, who are the closest thing to god in our lives, they brought us here, they gave us life. Why do some parents aim to over control their offspring even when they’ve reached a point in their lives when they are fully capable of making their own choices in life? Why is society constantly trying to control our lives with restrictions and commandments? So the film very boldly asks the question, do we really have what is commonly referred to in the bible as ‘free will’? Or is every aspect of our lives being regulated, controlled, judged and observed?

But it goes deeper than that. It also explores modern technology and that whole idea that we’re all part of some big scale social experiment involving the government and the media. It addresses the fact that all phones, televisions and computers have computers and microphones that are being used to spy on our lives. That with said technology “they” can scan our faces and hear our private conversations whenever they want to. Ever wonder how facebook tags someone in a picture before you do? Is  technology being used against us to pry on our private lives and somehow judge our behavior? What if our behavior isn’t acceptable to those watching? This is a theme that’s been explored a lot in films lately, the idea that an elite part of society wants to wipe all those deemed inadequate out of existence. Recently this was a plot device used in films like Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014) and Kingsman:The Secret Service (2015), which by the way also explores the potential evils of cellular phone technology. In Ex-Machina, Nathan is an all seeing all hearing god. He knows when they talk against him, when they are plotting against him, and is always one step ahead of his “subjects”. For how long can he treat AVA and Caleb like rats in a maze before they rebel? And can EVA and Caleb succeed in their search for freedom? That’s what this film is about, our collective search for freedom and happiness; that idea that we all have the right to live the lives that we want to live. That we don’t want to live under the illusion of freedom, what we want is to truly enjoy it, for real. That we need to accept that not everyone is the same as us, and that we shouldn’t try to fit anyone into our personal mold of what a human should be like.

The story that Garland wants to tell here is one that’s big on themes and ideas, but small in scope. The film has three main characters and takes place almost entirely in one location, but the ideas it explores are so big and the story so thought provoking and interesting that I didn’t care, I love movies that dare to ask these types of questions, the kind of themes that not everyone likes to talk about. I certainly felt a strong subversive vibe from this film, it’s a film against the powers that be, the powers that choke and oppress society, sometimes in ways society doesn’t even realize. This is why the film asks the question: “What happens if I don’t pass your test?” What happens when we don’t fit the mold they want us to fit in? Heavy stuff in deed. I did notice some influences here and there, for example many science fiction buffs will immediately catch the similarities with Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner(1982) because it has that whole concept of an android being angry with its creator because of its possible demise. It has a test to prove if one is a human  or an android, just like the 'Voight Kampf' test in Blade Runner. It also plays with the idea of a human falling in love with an android and wanting to run away together. There’s even doubt if Caleb is an android or not, same thing happens in Blade Runner, we’re never really sure if Deckard is an android or not. So yeah, what Alex Garland did with Ex-Machina was an update on Blade Runner (1982) adding his own themes in for good measure. All in all, a brainy science fiction film that I urge all those who are philosophically inclined to watch.  I’d say that Garland passed my test, he’s directed one of my favorite films of the year on his first try. Can he do it again?

Rating: 5 out of 5 

   

Heavy Metal 2000 (2000)

Heavy Metal 2000 (2000)

Directors: Michael Coldeway & Michel Lemire

Voice Actors: Julie Strain, Michael Ironside, Billy Idol

It took eight people to write Heavy Metal 2000, the film I will be reviewing today, and you know how that goes, the more writers a film has, the worse the movie is going to be! And this movie had eight writers! Was the resulting script a disaster? Or did these eight writers achieve their goals of making a movie that paid tribute to one of the greatest sci-fi/horror magazines on the planet? So anyhow, this is Heavy Metal 2000 (2000), the sequel to the animated cult classic anthology film Heavy Metal (1981). Now if you know anything about the original film, then you probably know that it’s composed of various stories, all done by different animation houses. This amalgamation of talent yielded an melting pot of short films with some of the worst and some of the best animation you will ever see, so it’s interesting in that sense. Nothing stays the same for very long, just when you think you’ve had enough of a particular short, soon another artistic style and voice takes over. The soundtrack on Heavy Metal is a memorable one, including many awesome rock and roll bands from the 70’s and 80’s. Today I review the sequel, Heavy Metal 2000. The thing to remember while watching this sequel is that it’s vastly different than the first film.

In contrast to the first Heavy Metal (1981), this sequel isn’t an anthology film; Heavy Metal 2000 sticks to only one story, this immediately shatters our expectations of it. Fans of the first film expected this sequel to maintain the anthology format, so they were disappointed to discover that with this sequel, they were going to get just one feature length story. I enjoy the amalgamation of different artistic talents that an anthology brings, but I also appreciate the fact that this sequel was going for something different. In its defense I will say that even though Heavy Metal 2000 isn’t an anthology, it still manages to retain that feel of what Heavy Metal Magazine is all about. If you didn’t already know, both of these movies are inspired by Heavy Metal Magazine, a magazine totally devoted to science fiction, horror and fantasy comics. It is a magazine filled with stories that are exactly like the story we see in Heavy Metal 2000. As a fan of this magazine, I can tell you I’ve read my fare share of issues, most of the stories include half naked heroines fighting muscular evil dudes, sorcerers, magicians, aliens, you name it. Many of the stories include nudity, violence and gore in one form or another. This is why I say that Heavy Metal 2000 captures the feel of the magazine; it has all the elements you’d expect to find on any given issue. Yet even though Heavy Metal 2000 is inspired by Heavy Metal magazine and gets everything right in terms of the spirit of the magazine, Heavy Metal 2000 is actually based on a graphic novel called ‘Melting Pot’, which was written by Kevin Eastman, Simon Bisley and Eric Talbot. Kevin Eastman created the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (along with co-creator Peter Laird) and is the current publisher and editor (and has been for years) of Heavy Metal Magazine, so he truly knows what Heavy Metal is all about. This explains why he is one of the writers of the film. 

Above: Issue #4 of 'Melting Pot', the comic series on which Heavy Metal 2000 is based on 

Below: Lady Death, an example of the Bad Girl comic craze of the 90's 

So let’s keep things in perspective, Heavy Metal 2000 isn’t Shakespeare and it never intends to be. Heavy Metal Magazine has always been about the type of stories that sci-fi/horror fans love to read. Stories filled with the fantastic, the horrifying, the shocking. This magazine has always been a love letter to low brow entertainment, it’s the kind of literature that some will no doubt consider immature, and they’d be right, these stories are often times juvenile in nature, but that’s the nature of the beast. And so, Heavy Metal 2000 basks in its b-movie roots, unashamedly so. Trust me when I say that one liners will be spoken, in fact, you’ll feel that it is the only language these characters speak. In this film you will see females being treated like sex objects and the females loving it. For example, Julie Strain does the voice of the main character in the film, a bad ass lady who goes by the name of ‘Jules’. She’s you’re a-typical bad ass babe. During the 90’s Bad Girls were the rave of the comic book world; suddenly every comic book was about Bad Girls with big boobs and even bigger guns! During those days we had comics like Vampirella, Lady Death and Danger Girl. And though Heavy Metal 2000 was released at the beginning of the new millennium, it still retains that 90’s Bad Girl vibe to it. You’ll notice the emphasis on showing Jules breasts bouncing all the way through the movie, sometimes the camera will focus entirely on her ass, or take its time showing her taking a shower, it’s all very gratuitous, designed to titillate teenage boys. You should see the extras on the Heavy Metal 2000 dvd, where Mrs. Strain talks all about how much she loves being the sexy sci-fi chick and showing some skin. She’s the ultimate tease for young boys (and men in general) kind of like a sci-fi version of Elvira. She knows you like her jugs, and she’s got no problem showing them to you, in fact, she loves the adulation she gets from it. Julie Strain obviously infused the character of Jules with her own persona, so much so that they even share the same name. 

Above, Julie Strain dressed up as Jules, below her animated counterpart

On this film, Jules is out for revenge. You see, this power hungry madman who goes by the name of Tyler is on his way to a distant planet that holds the gates to immortality. Tyler has the key, and he aims to use it in order to acquire immortality. Problem is that whoever holds the key goes insane from lust of power, and so throughout the movie Tyler destroys, rapes and kills anything on his path. Too bad for him that on one of his joy rides he ends up killing Jules family and her people. To make matters worse, Tyler kidnaps Jules sister because he thinks she’s hot. Now Jules is on a race to try and stop Tyler from acquiring immortality, while avenging her people and rescuing her sister!

I’ve always had a couple of problems with this movie. Number one, the animation is not the best. Maybe it’s because its old school, but I’ve seen old school animation films with excellent traditional hand drawn animation, so maybe it’s just the animation on this show isn’t really that good. Then again, it’s American animation, which has never distinguished itself for being excellent. And they do that thing where they mix computer generated images with traditional hand drawn animation and it sucks big time because back in those days computer animation was just getting started, so whatever computer animation the squeezed into any given scene looks amateurish by today’s standards. Then again, maybe I’ve been spoiled rotten by anime films. That being said, once I got accustomed to the films look and the choppy animation, I found myself having fun with it. Same story with Ralph Bakshi films, you just gotta get accustomed to the fact that the animation is a little rough around the edges.

Heavy Metal 2000 has its moments, like when Jules and Tyler meet up on this pleasure planet of sorts, filled with strippers with six breasts and aliens from all sorts of planets, it reminded me a bit of the cantina scene from Star Wars, if the cantina scene from Star Wars had been rated ‘R’. And by the way, speaking of this films rating, they don’t even make live action ‘R’ rated films like this one today! I mean, this is a hard ‘R’ rated film! There’s tons of gratuitous nudity, profanity is common place, and the gore, well, even for a cartoon it’s over the top at times. In that sense, this film is extremely rare, it’s an animated ‘R’ rated film! You don’t see one of those every day. Last time I saw one of those was Richard Linklater’s  A Scanner Darkly (2006), another one that comes to mind is South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut (1999). Every once in a while, an adventurous filmmaker will make one from time to time, but the truth is that the R rated animated film is rare because (with rare exceptions) they are not marketable. For a time there, animated films for adults where trying to find its corner in the market with films like Fritz the Cat (1972), Fire and Ice (1983) and American Pop (1981), but I guess it proved too difficult to get the common American adult to think of animation as anything more than the stuff of Saturday Morning Cartoons or children’s films. So Heavy Metal 2000 is a rare bird, on this one axes slice people in half, brains are blown to smithereens and sex robots can be bought at the corner of the street.

The soundtrack of the first film is one of the most memorable things about it; it included old school rock and roll bands like Blue Oyster Cult, Stevie Nicks, Journey, Cheap Trick, Black Sabbath, Devo and even Sammy Hagar. So of course, the soundtrack for Heavy Metal 2000 had to amass an interesting amount of bands as well. On this sequel we get the likes of Pantera, Monster Magnet, Coal Chamber, Bauhaus, Insane Clown Pose, Queens of the Stone Age, System of a Down and Puya. The problem for me with this soundtrack is that sometimes, the visuals don’t match with the music. Sometimes there’s a real hardcore song going on and it just doesn’t go with the visuals. The same thing happened when Dario Argento started using heavy metal in his horror movies, the heavy metal just didn’t mix with the visuals, thank god he stopped doing it after a while.  This is something very important on any film, the visuals have to go in accordance and sometimes even to the rhythm of the music. Not so here where songs are apparently randomly inserted into a scene without rhyme or reason. It feels like the songs where only inserted into the film in order to sell a soundtrack and not because the song is perfect for the scene. This truly sucks in my book.

The other problem I had with it is the weak direction and the editing. I don’t think I’ve ever seen any movie that uses fade to black so often! This is one of the signs of amateurish filmmaking, fade to black is what you resort to when you’ve got nowhere else to go because you forgot to film a transition or establishing shot. There’s no way to flow from one scene to the next so you fade to black. Well, they do this all the time in Heavy Metal 2000and it just reeks of bad filmmaking. So there’s unevenness in the editing and the music. Strange thing is that even with all these imperfections, I still managed to have fun with Heavy Metal 2000. Its dialog, sense of humor and mentality is so comic bookish that I ended up surrendering to it and having a blast. It’s a film made for adults who want to feel 12 years old again. It’s the kind of film in which when the masses are calling his name, the villain says “Blind adulation makes me so horny! Get me a wench!” At first I hated Heavy Metal 2000 with a passion, but it’s grown on me over the years. It’s rude, raw, loud, imperfect and sexist, but that’s exactly the way it should be, or else it wouldn’t be Heavy Metal. The original Heavy Metal film is superior in the sense that if offers a larger variety of stories and styles, the animation is a million times superior and because the soundtrack is infinitely more melodic and plain cool, but this sequel is definitely worth a watch, if you can get over the imperfections.

Rating: 3 out of 5

Jupiter Ascending (2015)

Jupiter Ascending (2015)

Directors: Lana and Andy Wachowski

Cast: Mila Kunis, Channing Tatum, Sean Bean, Eddie Redmayne

It’s an interesting thing keeping the pulse of the film industry, you see directors rise to become almost rock stars and then you see them fall, to never be heard from again. They make that one good movie that takes over the world and then a god awful second and third film. For some reason, they can’t recapture whatever it is that audiences loved about their first film; the muse fades away and vanishes completely. I can now say that I have witnessed the downfall of the Wachowski’s, the duo of film directors who became box office sensations when they released the Matrix Trilogy onto the world. Their downward spiral started with Speed Racer (2008), a visually interesting film that tanked at the boxed office, because audiences considered it too cartoony and silly. They continued with Cloud Atlas (2012) a star studded sci-fi film that failed to connect with audiences, probably because it was too complex or convoluted. I’ve yet to watch it in its entirety. That one tanked as well, yet another film by the Wachowski’s that didn’t make its money back. And now, they’ve probably put the last nail on their coffin with Jupiter Ascending(2015), a gigantic mess of a film that didn’t make its money back either. I ask myself, how do these guys keep working when their films keep losing money? I’m thinking Hollywood’s patience with the Wachowski’s is running out, they ‘re probably thinking “third one you’re out dudes”. I don’t think we’ll be seeing a film from these guys in quite some time. Hollywood producers can be very unforgiving when it comes to losing their millions. 

I didn’t want to believe Jupiter Ascending was a huge mess of a film because usually, I’m the guy defending those films that everybody hates for seemingly no reason, like for example Waterworld (1995). Sadly, on this occasion I could clearly see why people didn’t connect with Jupiter Ascending.  It was clear as daylight. First off, it had a female protagonist and that usually spells certain doom for science fiction films. I would love to see more female laden science fiction films, sadly, the track record shows that female laden science fiction films equals death at the box office. It could be one of two things. My theory is not that these films fail because they have women as protagonists; they fail because when they decide to cast a female in a sci-fi film and market it as such, it’s usually a shitty film like Barb Wire (1996), Aeon Flux (2005), Catwoman (2004) or Elektra (2005). I cheer every time they put a female lead in a great science fiction film, say something like Charlize Theron in Mad Max:Fury Road (2015) or Noomi Rapace in Prometheus (2012). But both of these films are rare exceptions and both films were not marketed as having females as leads. Are sci-fi fans mostly chauvinist pigs that won’t go see a movie if they know a woman is the lead? Or are female leads cast in shitty films? Whatever the case may be, Jupiter Ascending was one of the times when they cast a female lead in crappy film. What matters to me with movies is not what gender is leading the film, but if the film is a good one, if it entertains, if it says something. Sadly, Jupiter Ascending failed on all these accounts.  

Where did Jupiter Ascending go wrong? Why was it a huge fail? One of the reasons is that this was The Wachowski’s trying to do their own version of Frank Herbert’s Dune, unfortunately, it feels like the Wachowski’s bit off more than they could chew, because Dune is not a gee-whiz, magical, feel good, happy ending type of novel. It’s deep, complex, political, religious and all encompassing; Frank Herbert’s sci-fi classic is the anti-Star Wars and by that I mean, not exactly commercial. It’s dense, it’s epic, yet it has heart, it’s passionate. What the Wachowski’s did was make a soulless commercial version of Dune. They’ve stolen so many elements from Frank Herbert’s Dunenovels that it’s not even funny. The element of royal families feuding over planets, the idea that aristocrats use a drug that makes them more powerful, the idea of young people with wisdom beyond their years, these are all elements taken from the Dune novels, yet Herbert’s novels deliver all these ideas with gravitas, dignity and solemnity. Jupiter Ascending brings it down to b-movie territory, accompanied by cheesy dialog and terrible performances. While Dunekeeps a solemn tone, Jupiter Ascending turns into an overdose of messy computer generated effects involving flying boots and incomprehensible laser battles. I guess the Wachowski’s thought they could pull off a story like Dune, but with an emphasis on action and a dose of ‘cool’ which doesn’t sound so bad. If only Jupiter Ascending didn’t have so many negative elements going for it, I might have enjoyed it.  

"Flash Gordon approaching" 

When I say the film is messy, I’m speaking of the special effects heavy action sequences, which have cool concepts and ideas (like the flying boots) but things move so fast on the screen that all we see is this huge blurry  mess, we can’t really appreciate what the hell is happening on screen. Sometimes the action happens from so far away, we can’t even appreciate who or what we are seeing. This is something that happened to me once before in a film called The MutantChronicles (2008), a film I totally despised. Well, Jupiter Ascending suffers from this same malady; the camera distances itself from the action so much that we can’t see what the hell is happening; mix that with lightning fast action and the end result is you won’t understand a thing happening on screen. The visuals are too fast and too cramped, at times I felt like I was watching a Jackson Pollock painting, look at all those pretty colors, but what the hell is happening? The effects work goes from good to terrible, for example, I loved the look of the spaceships, but I hated these terribly animated lizard men that kept reminding me of the Koopas from Super Mario Brothers: The Movie (1993). These lizard creatures where so obviously computer generated, there was no effort put into making these creatures look remotely realistic or alive. Also, for some reason the film looks very dark, it made it even harder to see anything. 

Jupiter Ascending is infested with ancient clichés that any knowledgeable filmmaker would try and avoid. For example, they decided to dedicate a whole portion of the film to the age old cliché of having the good guy stop the naïve girl from marrying the wrong guy, ugh. That was cool when I saw it in Flash Gordon (1980), with Flash trying to stop Emperor Ming from marrying Gale. But here it feels old hat because it’s been done to death in a million movies before, most recently in John Carter (2012). By the way, this whole thing with the wedding, it plays out exactly like Flash Gordon (1980), so much so that the whole scene felt like a copy paste. I could probably do a whole list of films that end with a wedding having to be stopped by the good guy, so whenever I see this particular cliché I just have to roll my eyes. Yet, here are the Wachowski’s, filmmakers who were once considered groundbreaking, doing a film that’s filled with every single cliché in the book. They even included the one where the bad guy falls to his death! Come on! Don’t believe this film is ridden with cliches? Okay, then count the times in which Channing Tatum rescues Mila Kunis at the last moment from certain doom.

Then we have the main character, Jupiter Jones played by Mila Kunis, in my opinion, a terrible miscast. She doesn’t come off as strong, or a possible leader, nothing like say Paul Muadib in Dune. My advice to The Wachowski’s is, if you’re going to have a female lead a film, at least make her a strong female. Isn’t she supposed to become the leader of a nation? Shouldn’t she at least have demonstrated some leadership skills or at the very least be a go getter? Instead, she comes off like some helpless damsel in distress, and that my friends is just so passé. Audiences want to see strong women who use their brains and smarts to escape their perils. Sadly, Mila Kunis’s character comes off as an airhead who hates her life, she hates honest work. She wants to stay home sleeping. And this is the person to whom incredible responsibilities will be bestowed upon? I guess they were going for a Cinderella type of deal, but with Cinderella, you felt like she deserved better, Mila Kunis’s character doesn’t come off that way. The filmmakers just didn’t demonstrate her changing or evolving, she doesn’t seem to learn to become responsible, her character doesn't go through a journey of growth, or what they call a "character arc". Things just happen. Boom, now she’s royalty, boom know she owns a planet. These magnanimous events don't seem to affect her much, she just takes for granted that she is now responsible for a whole planet. Bottom line, Mila Kunis was horribly miscast here, she falls in my opinion on the list of beautiful actresses who can’t act. She's taken her place right next to Megan Fox. The screenplay with its cheesy dialog, didn’t help much either. It’s been a while since I’ve seen a movie squander its cast in such badly written roles; did the directors not give a crap about solid performances? Was the script beyond repair? Whatever the case, the cast was wasted on this film. Not even recent Oscar winner Eddie Redmayne (The Theory of Everything) can escape from this scripts awfulness.

So that’s it my friends, this was in my opinion one of the worst of the year. It’s an overdose of unintelligible CGI. Some reviewers refer to this one as a visual feast, but I don’t, I like to be able to appreciate and look at my visual feasts. Bottom line is this was a real disappointment coming from once groundbreaking filmmakers; there was no intent here to be innovative or interesting. Is there anything good I can say about this movie? Well, I liked those flying boots that’s for sure, but a movie cannot ride on cool flying boots alone. Oh and they cast legendary director Terry Gilliam in a cameo in which he plays a bureaucrat, which was awesome because as most film buffs know, Terry Gilliam’s films are always against bureaucracy! And like I said, the design work on the spaceships and buildings was interesting, but that’s about as good a compliment as I can give this movie. Did I mention this huge mess of a movie is over two hours long? I don’t mind long movies, just as long as they are good. To me Jupiter Ascending was lazy filmmaking, mired by bad writing and lack of originality. Sure it’s trying to be as epic as Dune, but it falls short because it feels like a stupefied version of Dune, which isn’t a good thing.

Rating: 2 out of 5 

Cool boots, bad movie. 

Terminator: Genisys (2015)

Terminator: Genisys (2015)

Director: Alan Taylor

Cast: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jason Clarke, Emilia Clarke, Jai Courtney, J.K. Simmons

Terminator: Genisys is one of those movies that nobody really felt safe about because, if it’s a Terminator film and Terminator creator James Cameron isn’t involved, then what’s the point right? Terminator (1984) and Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1995) are as mind blowing as they are because of Cameron’s involvement and because of the creative team that he amassed to make them. A work of art is the way it is because of the artist behind it. In the world of film making certain directors stand out as having their own unique style. There’s only one Sam Raimi, there’s only one David Lynch, and there’s only one James Cameron. You try and follow in the footsteps of a distinctive filmmaker that everybody loves and you’ve got trouble coming at you on a massive scale. In this sense, Alan Taylor, the director behind Thor: The Dark World (2013) had a gargantuan task in front of him. Why give a huge film like this one to a director whose only made one film prior to this one? It was probably a monetary decision; inexperienced directors are probably cheaper than paying an a-lister. Still, a Terminator film is better than no Terminator film so of course I decided to give Terminator: Genisys a chance. The previews didn’t look to promising, but I’d read some good reviews saying it was at the very least, entertaining. So is this new Terminator movie worth a damn?

The thing about Terminator sequels from Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (2003) onward is that they’ve all been made by different production companies, so each sequel has a different tone and voice to it. Most of them have tried to imitate James Cameron’s first two films. Did they try and fail? No. They tried and died. The rights to the Terminator films have been bouncing around from Production Company to Production Company like a hyper active jumping bean. Sadly, this has created unevenness in the whole franchise, actors keep changing, concepts get twisted…by now we’ve had four different actors play John Connor! And that’s without including the television show! The only consistency in these films has come from Arnold Schwarzenegger who keeps coming back to play the T-800 because he is very fond of this particular franchise almost as much as he’s fond of the Conan franchise. No matter how shitty the idea, he’s going to be there because Terminator and Conan made Arnold who he is, those where the films that truly put him on the map. So here he is, back again in another Terminator sequel without James Cameron behind the camera. My question is, if it wasn’t for Arnold, would we even care about these sequels? I’m thinking Arnold is the only thing keeping us old school Terminator fans going back to these films. Thankfully, we do get a good dose of Arnold throughout the whole film; he’s on it for most of the running time which is great. The younger cgi version of Arnold was well achieved in my book, not as fake as I thought it would look.

    

The thing about these sequels (at least from my point of view) is that they are not complete crap. In my book, Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (2003) was a decent sequel; it had tons of action and took the story to interesting places. I didn’t like Nich Stahl as John Connor, but whatever, the movie was well made. After Rise of the Machines, the rights went to some other production company and so those characters were never heard of again. And then we got Terminator: Salvation (2009), which introduced us to a whole other set of actors, characters and premises. Salvation had its moments, but it kind of fell apart in its third act, the way these filmmakers envisioned Skynet was such a letdown! And now withTerminator: Genisys we’re presented yet again with a new premise set of actors and so forth, there’s just no consistency with this series of films! Each one is a different take on the Terminator universe and not a true blue sequel with any sort of continuity. The big problem is there’s no creative force uniting these films, like say George Lucas behind the Star Wars films. Fine, so the sequels are all a disparate bunch, what was this fifth installment like? 

Basically the idea behind this sequel is forget everything that happened in the previous films because what happens on this film is an alternate timeline, so everything has changed. If you thought this was going to be a remake, then you will soon discover you were completely wrong, this is a straight reboot of the franchise. For a moment we do visit 1984 and we get to see familiar events transpire, we soon discover this isn’t the same 1984 we saw in Cameron’s The Terminator(1984). This is where I step in and warn you that the whole time travel element can get a bit confusing, so you’re better off just ignoring the whole time travel mumbo jumbo and just enjoy the movie, it’s what I did and it worked out just fine. Time travel movies by nature can get your brain circuits all crossed, especially when Arnold starts talking about quantum fields and nexuses and time points…my advice is let it all glaze over. That being said, I was having a blast with the first half of Genisys. The film functions as a prequel, showing us the events that lead to Kyle Reese being sent to 1984. This part of the film I really loved! These are events that have always been alluded to in previous films but were never shown, so it was great to finally get to see how it all went down.

In terms of action and special effects, nothing will ever surpass Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1995). What James Cameron offers us with his movies is jaw dropping action scenes that are meticulously planned; showstoppers that take over the film. This is something that a lot of the directors that have taken over the franchise don’t understand; the action in these films has to be special because it’s what we’ve become accustomed to. Action scenes can’t be five second cgi cheats, they can’t be run of the mill chase sequences, they have to be special somehow, they have to blow us away and they have to be spectacles. I mean, how bad ass was it when they blew up that real building in T2? Sadly, no single Terminator sequel has ever come close to achieving this level of awesomeness, Genisys included. While Genisys does have explosive action sequences, there’s nothing that offers that extra wow factor because we know a lot of it wasn’t done live. Most of the stunts and action scenes in Genisys are computer generated, including this nifty helicopter chase sequence that was cool, yet completely unrealistic, and realism my friends is what sells an action scene. One other action sequence involving a school bus in the San Francisco Bridge was cool, but sadly falls on cliché. How many times have we seen a car or a truck flip over? How many times have we seen said vehicle dangling from the edge of a bridge? Actually, that scene with the bus dangling from the bridge was the only true letdown in the whole film for me, I was rolling my eyes. So the film does have its action, it’s just nothing that we haven’t seen before.  

The film does have a decent cast holding it together and that’s a bonus for this one. The ones that stood out for me were Emilia Clarke as Sarah Connor and Jason Clarke as John Connor, they offered good, solid performances. J.K. Simmons does his usual crazy guy thing here, again, but of course it’s J.K. Simmon’s so it’s entertaining. And of course, it was a pleasure seeing Arnold back (just like he always said he would) playing The Terminator. Its funny how they’ve gone and switched things around making the monster from the first film into a father figure throughout the rest of the sequels. This is one of the things that I miss the most from the original film, that feeling like you’re in a horror movie, and The Terminator is the monster. That first film has a feeling of dread that none of the sequels has been able to match. By comparison, this new one feels like a family film. No guts, no nudity, no profanity, no blood. The first film was for adults, a hard ‘R’, this one is aimed at everyone. Everything here is squeaky safe, a la Disney films. There’s no edge like in the first film, when the Terminator rips his hand open to fix it, or when he gauges out his eye. There’s no steamy sex scene...once again, the dreaded terror of the PG-13 rating has struck with a vengeance. It’s the same cleansing process that films like Total Recall, Robocop and Poltergeist went through with their remakes. I’m dying to see films with an edge again. I remember going to the theater at one time was kind of scary because you never knew when a film was going to go “over the line” and shock you. Nowadays it’s all a lot of gee whiz effects, but none of the edge. It’s all perfectly safe entertainment. Terminator: Genisys falls in that ballpark.

Bottom line with Terminator: Genisys is it didn’t surpass my expectations, but it didn’t piss me off either.  James Cameron endorsed this film by saying that “if you like the Terminator films, you’ll love this movie”, and I have to say that I agree somewhat with this statement. Genisys does give us a lot of visual homage’s to the first two films and then twists them around just when you think you know what’s going to happen, I really liked that. It has many inside jokes that Terminator fans will no doubt enjoy. Also as a fan of the first two Terminator films, I was twisting and turning in my seat with some of the events that transpire which is a good thing. At least the film was getting a reaction from me. But essentially, what we have here is a squeaky clean reboot of a franchise that has had trouble trying to return to the grandeur that once was. They’ve gone and rebooted Terminator for a generation that has been born and bred in PG-13 cinema. Once again, a franchise has been neutered. Still, I reiterate that it’s not a total disaster, but then again, I don’t want a Terminator film that’s just ‘okay’ I want one that will freaking blow me away! Let’s see if this film makes enough money to jumpstart a new cycle of Terminator films. They better spit out as many as they can before 2018, when the rights to the Terminator films go back to James Cameron! That will be the day! Maybe then we’ll see a decent Terminator film, cause god knows only Cameron knows how to make a Terminator film right.

Rating: 3 out of 5