Tag: movie review

10 Cloverfield Lane review

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Grade: B-

I have a difficult relationship with the Cloverfield movies. The first movie, about a gigantic monster attacking New York, is something that I think was practically designed to appeal to me but didn’t. I think what hurt that movie the most was all its plot-holes as well as the idea that a character in the movie would film everything that was happening regardless of the consiquences — even to the point where they were about to die. That being said the latest 10 Cloverfield Lane is a better movie than the first Cloverfield, but not by much.

10 CLOVERFIELD LANEKind’a Signs meets Silence of the Lambs, in 10 Cloverfield Lane the character of Michelle (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) is in a car accident and awakens in a bunker built by Howard (John Goodman) where she also finds Emmett (John Gallagher Jr.) who tells her that the end of the world has come and everyone outside of the bunker is dead. Michelle has a hard time buying this from Howard since he’s a grade-a weirdo, but when Michelle does get a glimpse of the outside world and all the horrors that entails she decides that maybe staying in the bunker with normal and nice Emmett and odd and crazy Howard might not be such a bad idea after all.

Much like with Cloverfield, 10 Cloverfield Lane has its share of plot-holes from a room that controls air filtration that’s cut off from the rest of the bunker and is only accessible via crawling through airshafts (!?) to Emmett and Michelle being able to hide things from Howard in a relatively small bunker. But for whatever reason I don’t think these holes hurt 10 Cloverfield Lane as much as they did in Cloverfield. I think that’s mostly because since Cloverfield was shot in the first person fauxcumentary style and 10 Cloverfield traditionally it made it seem less like the characters were doing things to get the best shot and more like they were behaving somewhat in their own self interest.

I think what hurts 10 Cloverfield Lane the most is that there’s really no mystery with the characters at all. Michelle starts off as a strong woman who’s leaving her boyfriend for one reason or another and ends the movie the same way. Emmett starts off nice and sweet and innocent and ends the movie the same way. Howard starts off as the obvious villain in that he acts so odd and weird and ends the movie the same way.

I think if it weren’t so obvious as to who the characters really were in 10 Cloverfield Lane and what their intentions were right from the start this would have been a much better movie. With the film only really having three characters in it I think we really need to be kept guessing as to who is who and what everyone’s intentions really are. Otherwise there’s no puzzle and when we finally see what’s happening on the outside I think any investment the audience has in the characters of 10 Cloverfield Lane is long gone.

Cloverfield movie review

CategoriesMoviesPosted on

This is a repost of a movie review I made in 2008.

Grade: C

The main conceit of the movie Cloverfield is that you need to suspend your disbelief in the fact that; a gigantic Godzilla-like monster could attack New York City, the average 20-something New Yorker is dumber than a toddler and that the only thing dumber than the average 20-something New Yorker is a group of average 20-something New Yorkers. Trust me, believing that a gigantic monster might one day rise out of the sea and attack New York is much easier to believe than the low level of intelligence and self-preservation on display by the characters of Cloverfield.

Cloverfield

In Cloverfield, it’s the night before Rob (Michael Stahl-David) moves to Japan and all his friends have decided to throw him a going-away surprise party. At the party, friend “Hud” (T.J. Miller) is given the task of documenting the event with a home video camera when an earthquake followed by a gigantic explosion rocks Manhattan. What follows next is glimpses of some gigantic “thing” tearing through Manhattan, the destruction that follows and Hud documenting the event first-person on the ground.

Which, admittedly, the whole film being shot through the lens of Hud’s camera, however implausible, is quite effective. Cloverfield makes the audience feel as if they’re at the center of the action, only moments away from the terror of this gigantic monster and inches away from death.

Which is the greatest problem of the movie; while seemingly every other New Yorker wants off the island and away from this creature, the core group of the movie Cloverfield does their best to work their way back into the city to rescue a stranded friend. After seeing the monster destroy bridges, topple buildings, shrug off artillery shells and shear the head off the Statue of Liberty, I’m not sure anyone would have the wits about them to do anything but cover/run rather than actively make their way towards the creature and certain doom.

Suicide Squad movie review

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Grade: B

Suicide Squad is a much better movie than I was led to believe. It’s not a perfect film by any stretch of the imagination, but I’d say that it’s more good than bad in this third DC Entertainment movie.

suicide_squad_lgWhile most superhero movies are about good-guys trying to do good things, Suicide Squad is about the bad guys forced to do good things. Here, assassin Deadshot (Will Smith), girlfriend of Joker and just as crazy as Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie) and others are all being held in prison indefinitely for their crimes. But they’re made an offer “they can’t refuse” by government agent Amanda Waller (Viola Davis). Go on a suicidal mission into a city possessed by the evil, mystical forces of the Enchantress (Cara Delevingne) and get big reductions on their sentences or refuse and they stay and rot in jail forever.

First, the good about Suicide Squad. The characters of the movie are actually quite well drawn, interesting and different then one and other. Deadshot is a guy who makes big mistakes but has a daughter who’s the light of his life. Harley Quinn seemingly is the stereotypical “crazy/beautiful” girl yet has such an attachment to the Joker that the one guy who can’t love anything actually loves her back. And even a squad member like Diablo (Jay Hernandez) who has the power to control fire but won’t since this ability has cost him his wife and children.

There are other characters who don’t get as much screen time as the likes of Deadshot or Quinn like Captain Boomerang (Jai Courtney) or Killer Croc (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje) that all come off as complete people and not simple characters.

I also liked how the movie was structured. Essentially, Suicide Squad is Escape from New York the comic book movie, and I mean this in a good way. Here, the squad must make their way across an abandoned and partially destroyed Midway City in order to rescue one very important person trapped in a high-rise. All the squad members have microscopic explosives implanted in their necks that will go off if they start disobeying orders just like Escape from New York too. But Suicide Squad isn’t a copy of that movie, it’s more of an homage that uses Escape from New York as a starting point in creating its own story.

Suicide Squad posterI think it’s this structure that mostly separates Suicide Squad from other superhero movies of late. It does fall into the genera tropes that most superhero movies do these days — if they fail their mission the world as we know it will end and they have to fight the main baddie who’s the strongest of them all and seemingly undefeatable at the end of the movie too. But all of this is pretty standard stuff for a comic book movie and since the characters are so well drawn and when they’re interacting with each other is so good I don’t think this hurts Suicide Squad too much.

What hurts Suicide Squad the most are all the plot-holes.

Even for a superhero movie the holes in the story are gigantic. There are several parts of the movie that could have been skipped entirely if the characters didn’t walk everywhere but instead took helicopters, and it’s not like there’s a lack of helicopters since one always seems zooming in whenever they needed one. But this is just one hole of many that over the course of the movie added up to a story that by the end in many regards didn’t make much sense.

Still, even if the story wasn’t up to snuff the characters really were. And I think fact alone makes me interested in seeing what would happen in a Suicide Squad sequel — even if at the same time I’m hoping that movie will have less holes than this one.

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.