Category: Review

Hunt for the Wilderpeople movie review

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Grade: B+

Hunt for the Wilderpeople is not a perfect movie. At times the story seemed to drag a bit and I couldn’t help but thinking that if the movie were just a bit shorter with maybe a few of them being trimmed back or cut entirely Hunt for the Wilderpeople might have flowed better as a cohesive whole and been a better film.

1200That being said, I still thought Hunt for the Wilderpeople was pretty great and I’d rank it as one of the best movies I’ve seen this year.

Using a lot of the same “goofy” humor used in another great film he co-directed What We Do in the Shadows, writer/director Taika Waititi makes a story that could be really dark and disturbing instead something bright and slightly sweet with Hunt for the Wilderpeople. Here, pre-teen Ricky (Julian Dennison) is a juvenile delinquent in the making and is sent to live with an aunt (Rima Te Wiata) in the country since he’s got no where else to go and the next stop is juvenile jail. He quickly bonds with her but when she unexpectedly dies, Ricky and the aunt’s boyfriend Hec (Sam Neil) take a trip into the “bush” of New Zealand since Hec doesn’t have anywhere else to go either and Ricky doesn’t want to go back to the city. But the authorities think that Hec’s kidnapped Ricky and as the two run deeper and deeper into the forest and spend months on the run Hec finds that he needs Ricky as much and Ricky needs Hec.

I’m not sure that a movie like Hunt for the Wilderpeople could be made in the American movie studio system. There’s lots of talk about characters thinking Hec is molesting Ricky, Hec and Ricky both have guns and shoot them at other people and, shock of shocks, Hec smokes and he smokes around Ricky! All of which is taboo these days in American pop culture and especially in our films. But it’s all these things that we’d never see from American movies — I can hear the studio notes now, “Can’t Ricky and Hec throw stones or chuck sticks at people instead of shooting guns?” — that makes Hunt for the Wilderpeople so much fun to watch. That and Taika Waititi is such an interesting filmmaker with What We Do in the Shadows and his next movie being one of those big-budged American studio films of Thor: Ragnarok due out next year that makes him and his Hunt for the Wilderpeople one to watch.

The Legend of Tarzan (2016) movie review

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Grade: B

It seems like every few years one of the movie studios or TV channels decide to give the Edgar Rice Burroughs character of Tarzan a go. Some of these adaptations like the Disney version of Tarzan were successful and some like the 1998 Tarzan and the Lost City were not. So I’m happy to report that the latest Tarzan movie The Legend of Tarzan is one of the more successful films based on the character in memory.

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Instead of telling the origin story of the Tarzan character again, the creators of The Legend of Tarzan give us a new Tarzan adventure while still showing his backstory of being raised by apes via flashbacks. This time, Alexander Skarsgård stars as the title character who prefers to go by his given name “John” thank you very much. Transplanted from Africa, John now lives on his family’s estate in England and is married to Jane (Margot Robbie). Lured back to the jungles of Africa to go on a sort of goodwill tour, instead Tarzan along with American George Washington Williams (Samuel L. Jackson) find that Belgium is in the process of enslaving the Congo and it’s only a matter of time before lead henchmen Leon (Christoph Waltz) is able to bring in enough troops to complete his plan. It’s up to Tarzan, George Washington and Jane along with a tribe who were once close to Tarzan and Jane as well as a bevy of animals to stop Leon and free the Congo.

I feel like I’m familiar with the Tarzan character while at the same time not being too familiar with the actual source of Tarzan. I’ve read loads of Tarzan comics, seen Tarzan TV cartoons, watched many of the Johnny Weissmuller films and more modern Tarzan movies too. But I’ve never read any of the original novels so I come at Tarzan only knowing of other’s adaptations of the character. Which with The Legend of Tarzan might be a good thing. I don’t have many preconceived notions on how Tarzan is supposed to behave/act and don’t notice inconsistencies between this movie version of the character and the original.

I thought this 2016 version of Tarzan was more better than bad, and I liked several ways how they handled the character than what I’ve seen before. Like, Tarzan can’t exactly talk to the animals, but has a kinship with them and is able to us them via their natural instincts towards his own ends. And I also liked how Tarzan is the ultimate outsider — he’s not really at home with the apes who raised him since he’s not an ape and he’s not at home with mankind since he was the one guy on the planet who was raised by wild animals.

The story of The Legend of Tarzan surprised me as well. I’m usually good at figuring out how movies like this are going to end and how the third act is going to play out. And very early on in The Legend of Tarzan there’s a big third act battle that’s set up so I knew how the movie was going to end. Or at least I thought I knew how it was going to end. When The Legend of Tarzan actually got to this big battle it didn’t happen the way I thought, and in fact the movie ends up going in a completely different direction which was much more satisfying on where I thought the movie was headed.

If there’s one thing that I didn’t like about the movie it was how much of it relied on computer special effects. I really can’t ding The Legend of Tarzan for using computer effects to create all of the animals from apes to lions to wildebeest to crocodiles since working with live animals is always fraught with the unknown, and working with live animals that can easily kill an actor doubly so. But so much of the The Legend of Tarzan backgrounds from jungles to port cities to savanna were so obviously shot in a soundstage with artificial backdrops placed in that this really stood out to me. When the movie was on location and there were actual actors walking across actual Africa The Legend of Tarzan was breathtaking. But most of the time with these artificial backgrounds it was not so much.

Direct Beam Comms #47

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TV

The Living and the Dead – Grade: B-

BBC America recently ran the six-episode BBC horror mini-series The Living and the Dead one evening back-to-back all-night binge-style. The series is available to stream on the BBC America website and I would assume will air again there at some point in the future.

tv-the-living-and-the-deadThe Living and the Dead is set in late 19th century England where Dr. Nathan Appleby (Colin Morgan) and wife Charlotte (Charlotte Spencer) have moved from the city to the countryside when they inherit Nathan’s family estate after his mother died. Nathan is a psychologist which is brand new for the time and Charlotte a photographer and hope that the move to the country will be a change to a simpler way of life. But what they’re not expecting is that something’s amiss at the estate when young Harriet (Tallulah Haddon) begins acting weirdly and speaking in voices with her being able to control people’s thoughts as well. When Harriet puts a farmhand under a spell that leads to the man’s death Nathan steps up and wants to try and help the girl before she’s thrown into the asylum forever.

I thought The Living and the Dead had an interesting concept, but I’m not quite sold on the show just yet. At times I thought the episode dragged just a bit with lots of shots of farmhands harvesting a field and Nathan and Charlotte gazing longingly into the distance. And the story of the episode, poor Harriet seemingly possessed, has been done many times before and is the current horror movie du jour too doesn’t help.

So when Nathan’s, let’s call it, Harriet “case” is solved by the first episode I was relived. I couldn’t see myself sticking around until the end of the season to watch Nathan battle Harriet doing creepy voices and killing people in mysterious ways. It seems like moving forward the main theme of The Living and the Dead will be of Nathan investigating the weirdness of the estate with each episode focusing on some weird specific thing.

In many ways The Living and the Dead is a cross between Sherlock (young/hip investigator here of the paranormal) with Downton Abby (gee, wasn’t the past before we had indoor plumbing and vaccinations wonderful?). Which is interesting in a purely British way.

That being said the episode did anything but “fly” by and the last half hour felt every bit like a half hour. There are some clues planted in the episode that there’s something even weirder happening at the estate than might be let on from the first episode. So I thing I’ll probably finish out The Living and the Dead, even if it sits on my DVR a few weeks/months before I do so.

Halloween

brandon-lee-the-crowIs The Crow (1994) the perfect underrated and forgotten Halloween movie? I think so.

I think there should be a law that requires all TV channels to air a certain amount of horror related programming each October for Halloween. I’d say that 30% of everything shown that month should be required to be horror related. Is anyone with me?

I always feel a strong sense of melancholy at the end of October. I think part of that is that by the end of October it’s hard for me to keep denying that fall’s here and summer’s over since it’s dark out where I live by seven which in a few weeks will be six, the leaves are starting to drop and the nights are getting colder. But I think a large part of that melancholy is because October marks the end of the Halloween season which means the end of lots of good movies on TV.

I don’t know what it is but the TV channels almost never air any classic horror movies throughout the year. Or, if they do it’s late at night and maybe once or twice a month. But during Halloween those same channels have no problems letting their horror flags fly and will air a bevy of new and old scary flicks throughout the month. There’s usually so much of an embarrassment of riches that at times I’ll feel like I’m not watching enough of them if I chose to watch something else.

But come November 1 all that ends. That’s when the horror movie marathons end and the channels start turning their gaze towards Christmas movies and programs.

I know, I know. With things like Netflix and Amazon Prime and all of the other streaming options out there it’s not like horror movie express ever has to end. With the click of a button I could be watching any number of scary films instantly. And while we can argue about the quality of the films available to stream, to me there’s still something special about a whole month full of horror films all airing at once and knowing that other people too are all caught up in the season of Halloween too.

The other thing is that really Halloween is the only thing I’m really interested in that has an entire month devoted to it. There’s no single month devoted to sci-fi, superheroes or action flicks, that’s solely reserved for October and horror films.

I think a big part of it is that in my neck of the woods is that after Halloween and then Thanksgiving, we move into the time of bad weather and days that are basically done by the time you get home from work. So maybe that’s it — maybe it isn’t that October and Halloween are done, it’s that once those things are over with it means that we’re moving into a new part of the year. And while moving onto just about any other part of the year is nice — Yay! Winter’s over and it’s spring… Horray! It’s summertime! … Fall is here and with it cooler temperatures! — Moving onto winter, to me at least, is dreadful.

So when Halloween’s over it means that by extension what I consider the good part of the year’s over and we’re onto the slow, cold dark time that is winter. And that’s what I’m dreading and not the end of October/Halloween?

Nah, I’m going to go with me missing watching things like Frankenstein, Dracula and The Wolfman on TV. 😉

One thing I have noticed of late is that with all the horror movie remakes created over the last few years means that there’s less opportunities for the original movies to be shown on TV. I see things like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Dawn of the Dead remakes on TV all the time, but I honestly can’t tell you the last time, or perhaps ever, that I saw the original movies air.

Books

The Signature Art of Brian Stelfreeze

may161221Out November 1 is The Signature Art of Brian Stelfreeze which collects illustrations from the illustrator’s long career. I’ve been an admirer of Stelfreeze’s work for many years now especially his painted covers for various comics and now Stelfreeze is gaining a wider reckognition as the artist on the new The Black Panther comic as well.

From Boom Studios:

Brian Stelfreeze Artist: Brian Stelfreeze Cover Artist: Brian Stelfreeze ’ The definitive art collection of the quintessential artist’s artist, perfect for fans of the craft. ’ Explore the career of comics legend Brian Stelfreeze in exquisite detail. ’ An unprecedented look at never-before-seen sketches, process sections, fan-favorite classic pieces, sequential pages, covers across Brian’s career, and commentary from his collaborators, including Scott Peterson, Doug Wagner, and Cully Hamner.

The Reading List

This week in pop-culture history

  • 1949: Armin Shimerman, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Quark of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine is born
  • 1954: Godzilla opens in Japan
  • 2009: The TV series V premiers

Steve Jobs (2015) movie review

CategoriesMovies, ReviewPosted on

Grade: A

For all the “buzz” Steve Jobs had around it last winter the movie failed to live up to expectations at the box office. Written by Aaron Sorkin (The West Wing, The Social Network) and directed by Danny Boyle (28 Days Later, Slumdog Millionaire) Steve Jobs made on a relatively small budged made a relatively small haul at the box office.

And that’s a shame because I think that Steve Jobs was one of the best movies of 2015.

Told in three acts, Steve Jobs follows the titular character behind the scenes at three important product launches including the original Macintosh in 1984, Jobs’ NeXT Computer in 1988 and the original iMac in 1998. Which is one way Steve Jobs differs from just about every other biopic out there — it makes no attempt to tell the entire story of the subjects’ life. We only get to see Jobs in the high-stress behind the scenes environment minutes before he is about to stand on stage and deliver the next big thing. But because these events happened at different points in his life, when he was 29, 33 and 43, we see measurably different versions of the man.

In the first act, Jobs is this perfectly made organism almost built for the sole purpose of creating what he sees as the most important piece of technology in the modern age; the Macintosh. He doesn’t care about the feelings of his employees, denies that a little girl is his daughter and is willing to do almost anything if it means his vision will be represented in the final product. In the second act, a more mature Jobs is still pushing boundaries and burning bridges yet now has a relationship with the girl he now sees as his own. And in the third act Jobs’ is almost completely different then the man from 1984. He’s still driven and focused but not to the point of destroying the lives of those around him though he can still be extremely caustic.

But Jobs relationship with his daughter, played by three different actresses at three different ages in the acts, is what becomes key to his story. What starts out as someone he won’t recognize as his own slowly becomes someone so important to his life that he’s willing to change for her.

I’m not sure why the movie did as poorly as it did at the box office? One reason I can think of is that Jobs has always had such a polarizing personality. Either you loved or hated him. But I doubt that there was anyone who didn’t know him. And maybe people had already formed an opinion on him either pro or con and that’s why they stayed away? Also, there was talk about the movie being more fiction than fact, which after having read Walter Isaacson’s authorized biography of Steve Jobs which this movie is based on I’d say it’s probably more fact than fiction.

On the other hand — show me the biopic that is 100% factual and I’ll show you one boring movie.

What amazes me about Steve Jobs is its structure of the three acts in three different time periods. Other than a few flashbacks both Boyle and Sorkin keep the movie in its kinetic present, with Jobs at the center of the storm as they get ready for the impending product launch while at the same time dealing with various people needing his time for various business and personal reasons.

It’s the way the movie’s told that keeps its forward momentum at a breakneck pace. And for a genera of movie that’s known for being anything but “breakneck,” I think it’s something future biopics can take note of.

X-Men Apocalypse movie review

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Grade: C

xmen_apocalypse_ver18Here’s the thing — I am a fan of all things X-Men. I collected X-Men comics, watched X-Men cartoons and love the X-Men movie series. Well, mostly love. I wasn’t a big fan of the third X-Men movie X-Men: The Last Stand but otherwise I think for the most part those films are my favorite of all the comic books to movie series with X-Men: Days of Future Past being my favorite of the bunch.

That’s why it sucks for me so much to report that the latest X-Men movie X-Men: Apocalypse is a real stinker.

X-Men: Apocalypse takes place in 1983, 10 years after the previous X-Men: Days of Future Past which itself took place 10 years after the first X-Men: First Class. Which is the first problem with the movie — the characters have been around for 20 years of movie-time at this point yet they simply haven’t aged. Magneto (Michael Fassbender) and Xavier (James McAvoy) should be in their 50s with Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence) and Beast (Nicholas Hoult ) in their 40s with the passage of time, yet they all look as young and vibrant as ever.

Which admittedly is a minor quibble that’s easily overlooked except the movie’s chock full of stuff like that.

Most of the story deals with an ancient godlike En Sabah Nur/Apocalypse (Oscar Isaac). Apocalypse is accidentally awakened in Egypt where he’s been slumbering for 5,000 years and promptly goes about recruiting a new team of his four horsemen of the apocalypse which he finds in the mutants of the 1980s. These acolytes include Magneto, Angel (Ben Hardy), Storm (Alexandra Shipp) and Psylocke (Olivia Munn). Apocalypse’s plan is to enhance these four mutants powers so they can go around and destroy the world so that the weak (or most everyone on the planet) dies leaving only the strong behind.

xmen0001

And why do these four mutants go along with Apocalypse and his planetary genocidal scheme? Well, that’s never really explained or explored. One minute these mutants wouldn’t harm a fly and the next they’re ready to murder mankind on a global scale which really makes no sense. So you give me something and say you’re the boss, and I’m ready to become a mass murdered because you say so no questions asked?

And lots of regular people die in this movie. Magneto kills a handful up-close and while using his powers to destroy cities ala Metropolis in Man of Steel thousands, if not millions more. And what price does he pay at the end of his movie for harming so many? Nothing whatsoever. This man who survived the death camps at Auschwitz and spent the first movie of the series hunting down the man who killed his mother becomes a mass murderer that would place him in the top tier of killers of all time. Worst of all at the end of X-Men: Days of Future Past he’s a smiling, unburdened and free from being in jail of all the mass-destruction he’s caused.

Seriously, at the end of the movie many major cities have massive Magneto caused damages, yet at the end of the film everthing’s supposed to be hunky-dory.

X-Men the Age of Apocalypse posterAgainst Apocalypse and his minions are Xavier and a hodgepodge team of mutant students including shapeshifting Mystique, strong Beast, telekinetic Jean Grey (Sophie Turner), able to shoot blasts of energy from his eyes Scott Summers (Tye Sheridan), lightning-fast Quicksilver (Evan Peters), able to transport himself short distances Nightcrawler (Kodi Smit-McPhee) and stands around looking concerned Moira Mactaggert (Rose Byrne). But these aren’t the X-Men per-se, they’re mostly students and other helpers from previous films thrown together in order to try and stop Apocalypse when Xavier is incapacitated.

Which is another problem with the movie — these characters have no training whatsoever in using their powers or working tighter as a team, yet here they fight like seasoned veterans of 1,000 wars. They aren’t so much the X-Men, but instead they’re who the X-Men will be at the end of the film when the movie studio is teasing the next one in the final scene.

Of course these good-guys, Apocalypse and his horsemen meet and do battle, this time in a ruined Cairo Apocalypse leveled when making a grand pyramid to himself. Which is another problem — for a character who’s strong enough to level a city from sheer willpower lane he doesn’t seem like he’d need the help of anyone else to ruin/rule the world.

And now that I think about it, this is the third X-Men movie of the current franchise yet there’s never really been a legitimate X-Men team. Okay, there were the future X-Men in Days of Future Past but otherwise in these prequel movies the main characters have always been young students thrown together in some fight to save the planet from some level of devastation. Yet in the decades of movie time between films Xavier never took the initiative to actually build an X-Men team, EVEN THOUGH THE MOVIE’S HAVE ALWAYS HAD X-MEN IN THE TITLE!

If there are two rays of light in X-Men: Days of Future Past it’s of the character of Nightcrawler who’s actually used quite well in this movie — his powers allow him to go places others can’t — and that of Quicksilver who was used to good effect in the previous movie too. Otherwise, the movie was mostly cloudy.

I dunno. I was really looking forward to X-Men: Apocalypse for a long while and have really enjoyed watching this current version of the cast inhabit their roles the last few films. But this movie was such an utter disappointment on so many levels I don’t know if with the next one — and there will be a next movie, X-Men: Apocalypse earned more than $500 million at the box office — I’d be so quick to see it.

That next X-Men movie might be one I wait to turn up on cable some Saturday night.