PACIFIC RIM: UPRISING Review

A year ago on this weekend a reboot of the nineties hit show Power Rangers was released and embraced a more moody and grounded tone than that of its source material. This year, with Pacific Rim: Uprising what we have is what that movie might have been had it decided to go another route and play up the more cartoonish aspects of that super hero series. This is to say that Uprising is so bombastically cheesy in its reliance on knowing exactly what it is and delivering on exactly what it promises that it's genuinely hard to fault the film for doing what it sells itself to be. Pacific Rim: Uprising is a five year-later sequel that no one in particular was necessarily looking for, but is here given the amount of dough that original ended up making in China ($411 million globally on a $190 million budget, $111 of which came from China-almost $10 million more than the film made domestically). Of course, with this kind of sophomore slump effect weighing on the decision of whether or not to even continue the would-be franchise this second installment has come to us not from "visionary" and now Oscar-winning director Guillermo del Toro nor does it star Charlie Hunnam or Idris Elba, but instead is co-written and directed by Netflix's Daredevil season one showrunner Steven DeKnight and enlists the fresh talent of Star Wars-breakout John Boyega as the son of Elba's fallen character from the first film. Uprising jumps a decade into the future and intends to reboot Pacific Rim the opposite way that Power Rangers movie did the original series last year. Meaning, while the first Pacific Rim was a little too self-serious given its story and a little more moody than might have been necessary, while more visually detailed to be sure, Uprising plays things a little more straight-forward and is exactly the kind of movie I would have loved when I was seven or eight years-old; it's big, it's colorful, and it has robots fighting robots and robots fighting monsters. That isn't to say this is a better film than its predecessor-I don't think I'd go that far as del Toro still enlisted a fun enough tone and built an entire world from which Uprising benefits-and Uprising maybe complicates things a little too much with its story whereas that initial film was so cut and dry in that aspect it was almost shocking, but the important thing is that Uprising is a fun if not ultimately forgettable slice of entertainment that plays to its B-movie strengths.

First Trailer for PACIFIC RIM: UPRISING

I generally admire what director Guillermo del Toro does as I can appreciate the eye the guy has for filmmaking, but to be honest I was rather underwhelmed by 2013's Pacific Rim from a story perspective. I knew del Toro would be able to deliver on a visual level for sure, but that there wasn't a strong investment to be made in any of the characters or their plight of driving a seemingly obsolete special weapon in an effort to save the world from the apocalypse. More, I wanted to be invested in the world del Toro created and while there were certainly compelling elements to the original film it wasn't as wholly satisfying as I'd hoped. For further exploration as to why the film doesn't particularly hold up in my memory as being overly interesting you can read my original review here. Moving on though, we now have the sequel that was always something of an uncertainty. It was the huge numbers in China that convinced Legendary to move ahead with a sequel, this time Universal taking over the distribution for Warner Bros. In Pacific Rim: Uprising John Boyega takes over the protagonist reigns from Charlie Hunnam as the film begins a decade after the events of the original as Boyega plays Jake Pentecost, the son of Ideris Elba's character in the first film. Jake, who was a once-promising Jaegar pilot has become caught up in the criminal underworld, but when his estranged sister, Mako Mori (Rinko Kikuchi), gives him one last chance to live up to his father’s promise, he takes charge against a new wave of Kaiju attacks. All of that said, this first look at Uprising looks to be as visually promising as the first though I'm curious to see if new director Steven S. DeKnight (who worked as the showrunner for Netflix's Daredevil season one), who took over part of the screenplay writing duties once coming on board, will be able to make me more invested in this world and these people. That isn't to say I don't appreciate the visuals-del Toro's original was as inventive and grand as anything else the auteur has done-but while Uprising certainly looks to be a colorful action romp with Boyega having a lot of fun-his character teaming up with friend Lambert (Scott Eastwood) to pilot a state-of-the-art new Jaegar called Gipsy Avenger-I'm hoping it delivers on all fronts. Pacific Rim: Uprising also stars Jing Tian, Cailee Spaeny, Burn Gorman, Adria Arjona, Charlie Day, and opens on March 23, 2018.

THE FATE OF THE FURIOUS Review

What direction The Fast and the Furious franchise might go in the aftermath of the untimely death of Paul Walker and the heartfelt sendoff that was Furious 7 was always going to prove to be an interesting answer. And now, we have that answer in the form of The Fate of the Furious-the eighth installment in this accidentally successful saga that only continues to up the action ante while somehow managing to also drive the plot forward and successfully push the story in new directions. It must be said up front that if you're a fan of the series and what it's become then this latest entry will more or less satisfy you, but whereas up until this point it's been exciting and interesting to see where the next film would take the series the question of how long this can go on is certainly more prevalent as Fate comes to a close. It's not that Fate necessarily loses any of the steam from the previous films, but more that it's beginning to spin its wheels; ultimately leaving little new room for the series to expand. Sure, there are questions left unanswered that will undoubtedly be resolved in future installments, but now that we've built to the events of Tokyo Drift and are in fact two movies past the moment of real momentum where Deckard Shaw (Jason Statham), the real big bad of the franchise, showed up and did his thing the question is now if there is anything left for the series to do to re-entice audiences. It is not without admirable effort that The Fate of the Furious attempts to re-ignite the investment in these characters and their on-going adventures as this latest chapter takes the route of fracturing the one thing that has always been the constant of The Fast and the Furious-its family unit. If you've seen the trailers or even any of the clips that have been released for Fate it is likely that you're aware of the arc that Vin Diesel's patriarch Dom Toretto takes this time around. While this turn of dynamics among the cast is a welcome change in narrative direction it only works as well when it is able to balance itself with the overall tone of the franchise, but too often it takes itself a tinge too seriously and goes a shade too dark for this to both feel fresh while in the same vein as the outlandish, but supremely entertaining Fast & Furious movies we know and love.  

New Trailer for THE FATE OF THE FURIOUS

There is a new Fate of the Furious trailer out and it is just as bonkers, campy, and outlandish as I could have ever hoped. It's hard not to wonder if this franchise would feel more stagnant were it not for the tragic and untimely death of Paul Walker in the middle of production on the seventh film, but with the eighth film in the franchise it seems Dominic Toretto and his gang are moving on to different terrain and by that I mean both literally as well as in terms of story. I somewhat artlessly assumed that the beginning of the "final" trilogy in this ever-expanding brand would more or less follow the beats of those that had come before it meaning Dom and his gang would get roped into an elaborate mission that requires their particular set of skills to stop a new villain of the week, this time played by Charlize Theron. Obviously, I assumed wrong as the first trailer for the film painted a very different dynamic between this "family" we've all come to know and love. For one reason or another, Toretto has betrayed all those he once cared about and considered family by going to work for Theron's antagonist who reveals herself in this trailer to have had a hand in the last few films (meaning 6 & 7) despite the fact the apparent culprits of those films, the Shaw brothers, being either deceased or recruited to help the original team defeat Dom and Theron's Cipher. Like the remaining members of the crew in Letty (Michelle Rodriguez), Tej (Ludacris), Ramsey (Nathalie Emmanuel), Roman (Tyrese) and of course Hobbs (Dwayne Johnson) I don't know how I feel about this, but this is certainly an interesting way to kick off this new (final?) phase in the Fast & Furious franchise and I look forward to seeing what twist series screenwriter Chris Morgan has come up with to justify Dom's sudden turn as well as what new franchise director F. Gary Gray (Straight Outta Compton) has come up with to leave his mark. The Fate of the Furious also stars Jason Statham, Kurt Russel, Scott Eastwood, Elsa Pataky, Helen Mirren, and opens on April 14th, 2017.

First Trailer for THE FATE OF THE FURIOUS

I've talked at length about how strange it is that a franchise born out of pure confusion and desperate measures has come to be one of the biggest if not the most long-running series that performs as consistently as these Fast & Furious films do. One can't help but to wonder if the franchise would feel more in a state of fatigue were it not for the tragic and rather shocking death of Paul Walker in the middle of production on the seventh film, but with the eighth film in the franchise it seems Dominic Toretto and his gang are moving on to different terrain and by that I mean both in terms of physically as well as in story. I guess I somewhat artlessly assumed that the beginning of the "final" trilogy in this ever-expanding brand would more or less follow the beats of those that had come before it meaning Dom and his gang would get roped into an elaborate mission that requires their particular set of skills to stop a new villain of the week, this time played by Charlize Theron. I assumed wrong as from the opening moments of this over three-minute trailer it's clear Vin Diesel's Toretto is no longer the man that holds family above all else. In fact, he goes full rogue here not only betraying those he once called family, but actively dismantling them forcing the remaining members of his crew in Letty (Michelle Rodriguez), Tej (Ludacris), Ramsey (Nathalie Emmanuel), and Roman (Tyrese) to team-up with The Rock's Hobbs and former enemy Deckard Shaw (Jason Statham) in order to take him down. This is an interesting way to kick off this new phase in the Fast & Furious story and I look forward to seeing what twist series screenwriter Chris Morgan has come up with to justify Dom's sudden turn. All of that said it should also be noted that new to the franchise director F. Gary Gray (Straight Outta Compton) has seemed to certainly add his own flavor to the mix as not only are the stunts on par with the stakes the team seems to be facing, but there is an undeniable rhythm to it all that hopefully plays through the entire runtime of the final film. The weirdly titled The Fate of the Furious also stars Kurt Russel, Scott Eastwood, Elsa Pataky, Helen Mirren, and opens on April 14th, 2017.

SNOWDEN Review

For the second year in a row now we have a fictionalized account of real-life events that were already well-documented in award-winning documentaries starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt doing weird accents. And, much like The Walk, the biggest obstacle Snowden was going to need to overcome was that of the one for its own relevancy. Not only did most of the American public see the splattering of media coverage when the Snowden story broke in the summer of 2013, but many also watched Laura Poitras' Oscar-winning documentary, Citizenfour, that was released in 2014 and chronicled how Poitras along with Guardian reporters Glenn Greenwald and Ewen MacAskill traveled to Hong Kong to meet with Edward Snowden and discuss how to break the news of the information the whistleblower was willing to leak. That rather riveting documentary was more than enough to give us a portrait of who this man was and why he did what he did without going into overly dramatized flashbacks or even divulging all of his professional history with the CIA and the military. Solely through how he presented himself in the current circumstances he was facing at the time of Citizenfour viewers glimpsed what type of man Edward Joseph Snowden is and what he might have done were he presented with the dilemma of going along with a CIA field operatives dirty plan or standing up to that more seasoned field agent and doing what he felt was right no matter if it meant him resigning from the agency or not. While we could have likely guessed what path Snowden would have taken given the virtues and sentiments he doles out in his Citizenfour interviews for some reason director Oliver Stone has found it necessary to go back and fill in those gaps just in case you didn't get it. While the idea of a feature film around Snowden isn't inherently a bad one what Stone has chosen to do with the material in telling a straightforward account on the life and times of Snowden in the twelve years leading up to the incident that would make him the, "World's Most Wanted Man" make the idea seem downright unnecessary. Given this is exactly the type of territory Stone has always enjoyed covering, especially when he has a particular point of view on the subject and wants nothing more than to convince you he's right, I expected Snowden to offer a compelling and thoughtful argument and examination for and of the actions Snowden took and why they should be celebrated rather than slammed, but while Stone's position is evident there is nothing here to compel an indifferent viewer one way or the other.

First Trailer for Ben Affleck's LIVE BY NIGHT

In the wake of the fall movie season kicking off this week with the release of the Warner Bros. Sully it seems the production company has gone into full media blitz mode with the remainder of their fall slate that contains many of their likely awards contenders. We already caught a glimpse of the WB's Christmas week release on Wednesday with Collateral Beauty and now we have our first look at Ben Affleck's directorial follow-up to his Best Picture-winning Argo. It's been four years since Affleck directed a film and in the interim has worked with Terrence Malick, David Fincher, and Zack Snyder who likely have contributed to what growth we might see in Affleck's fourth feature. Given the actor, writer, director, and producer has been enamored with the DC extended cinematic universe as of late with more being made about the pre-production of his solo Batman film (which will be his fifth directorial venture) than that of his upcoming turn in Gavin O'Connor's The Accountant which drops in theaters in just over a month it's nice to finally see a glimpse of what Affleck has been up to behind the camera as I'm in the middle of reading the Dennis Lehane novel on which Live By Night is based. Set in the prohibition era Affleck plays Joe Coughlin, the youngest son of a prominent Boston police captain who has long since turned his back on his strict and proper upbringing for a career in the pay of the city's most fearsome mobsters. Honestly, I love the look and the tone this trailer conveys and even the soundtrack featuring Hozier's "Arsonist's Lullabye," works. Affleck enlisted legendary director of photography Robert Richardson (The Aviator, The Hateful Eight) and the particular aesthetic shines through here as visually the film looks as thrilling as the story should be. While I was worried that the film would for some reason end up getting dumped amidst the early spring crowd WB seems to have confidence in the film as they've scheduled it in the same slot as The Revenant last year with a limited qualifying run in December. Here's hoping they're right. Live By Night also stars Zoe Saldana, Elle Fanning, Sienna Miller, Brendan Gleeson, Scott Eastwood, Chris Cooper, Titus Welliver, Anthony Michael Hall, Chris Messina, and opens on January 13, 2017.

SUICIDE SQUAD Review

Don't believe everything you hear. That would be the first thing I would tell people if they were to ask what I thought about the latest entry in the DC Comics extended universe as funded by Warner Brothers. Don't believe everything you hear in that Suicide Squad isn't nearly as terrible as those early reviews have made it out to be, but don't believe everything you saw in those trailers that made you think this might be a new super hero masterpiece either. Suicide Squad has its flaws. Plenty of them in fact-the biggest perpetrator being the convoluted  story that ultimately does so many circles around itself that it becomes a pointless exercise in power for Amanda Waller (as played by the wonderful Viola Davis). Suicide Squad also has its fair share of highlights as well-most of them concerning the effort the cast is putting into making this group of misfits feel like a family when the script gives them little to work with. This is all very disappointing mind you as writer/director David Ayer (who wrote Training Day and who wrote and directed the likes of End of Watch and Fury) clearly has a knack for these types of characters and putting such characters in high-stakes situations that bring out qualities and traits viewers will find endearing and affecting despite potentially being revolting. The issue here is that Ayer seemingly felt the need to include so many characters that he let his storytelling techniques get away from him and instead decided to give us an introductory hour where we are presented with each of the ten (count 'em ten) main characters as well as how they all ended up together and walking into the plot device that is both meant to unite them and that could have also been completely avoided if the idea to bring them together was rejected in the first place. There is interesting ideas aplenty here and the film very well could have explored the difference between bad and evil and how many bad things one has to do or ends up doing before they cross that line. Instead, Ayer uses this opportunity to bring together his comic book version of the Dirty Dozen and expose them at face value, for what they are, and how they work together. Just so we're all on the same page-that would have been fine. I don't have an issue, especially at this stage of the game, with a DC film not leaning too hard on the philosophical stuff and instead focusing more on simply having fun, but even in doing this Ayer's story does itself no favors by making everything interconnected to the point the film renders itself irrelevant when all he really needed to do was give these usual foes a formidable one of their own.

New Trailer & Posters for SUICIDE SQUAD

It seems strange that after last summers Comic-Con fiasco where Warner Bros. attempted to have the first footage of Suicide Squad taken down after it was pirated and leaked that they would already be releasing another trailer for the film. Given they were unsuccessful in having the footage removed and ultimately decided to release the high-quality version and because the movie doesn't come out for another six more months one would imagine another trailer would be held at least until the release Batman v Superman, but here we are. The CW aired a special tonight titled The Dawn of the Justice League hosted by Kevin Smith and Geoff Johns, Chief Creative Officer at DC Entertainment, and in lieu of simply giving another thirty second TV spot for Bats vs. Supes DC and WB opted for this two and a half minute peek at the second film in their cinematic universe that runs the risk of feeling old by the time the movie arrives in August. That said, the trailer is pretty fantastic and it's clear director David Ayer (End of Watch, Fury) is really in tune with this band of anti-heroes whose story he is conveying. While I would have kept more of Jared Leto's Joker in the shadows as the first trailer revealed just enough I won't say I wasn't excited to see the footage I just know I'd have been more pleased if I hadn't seen it until I saw it in the context of the film. Suicide Squad also stars Margot Robbie as Harley Quinn, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje as Killer Croc, Will Smith as Deadshot, Jai Courney as Captain Boomerang, Cara Delevingne as Enchantress, Joel Kinnaman as Rick Flagg, Karen Fukuhara as Katana, Jay Hernandez as El Diablo, Viola Davis as Amanda Waller, as well as Jim Parrack, Adam Beach, Scott Eastwood, Common, David Harbour, Ike Barinholtz and opens on August 5, 2016.

THE LONGEST RIDE Review

I don't know that I've ever reviewed a Nicholas Sparks film on this site before. There often seems no point due to the fact that if you're seeing these movies you know exactly what you want and what you're getting and while that is probably the case here as well, there was something unquestionably intriguing about the tone set by the trailers for The Longest Ride. The musical choices that included Banks "Waiting Game," signaled something of a forbidden, almost haunting love story that might be worth tuning into due to the team behind translating the Sparks story to the screen felt uncommon. It's not out of the question given love stories depend more on the way they're told and the chemistry of the actors involved to be successful than that of the actual story and with director George Tillman Jr. (Soul Food, Notorious, Faster) there certainly seemed potential for something interesting. Love is such an intangible thing it's always difficult to capture the essence of what makes it so special without resorting to cliches and typically that is what Sparks ends up doing. The Longest Ride fortunately doesn't fall prey to the trap of some of the more recent Sparks adaptations in that it doesn't go completely bonkers in the end and makes all kinds of convoluted twists with the only significance being to shock the audience. I haven't seen Safe Haven, but heard it was quite a doozy while I actually caught The Best of Me a few weeks ago and despite the set-up hinting at nothing down the road it became fairly evident where things were heading the moment a couple instances took place one after another. With that in mind, what there is to appreciate about Ride is that it is little more than a basic human story about figuring out priorities and becoming satisfied with a routine that only has a few contrivances forced on it in order to create conflict, but none so outlandish it makes the viewer realize the ridiculousness of it all. It at least feels like an earnest attempt to portray love whereas the majority of the recent Sparks films feel more like cash-grabs capitalizing on manufactured emotions.

FURY Review

Ernest Hemingway said, "Never think that war, no matter how necessary, nor how justified, is not a crime." Hemingway means to inform us of the repercussions of getting carried away with violence as power, but director David Ayer asks us to contemplate not the repercussions but the mentality it takes to execute such acts of war. Is the ruthlessness with which these men approach their actions acceptable? Is their matter-of-fact attitude towards taking a life understandable within the confines of the circumstances? There is never a moment in Ayer's latest effort, Fury, where we let ourselves become distracted by the action sequences or the curiosity of where the story is going because we know exactly where it's taking us and that, in many ways, is the only let-up the film offers as it's otherwise a consistently tense and mentally exhausting experience. In order to deliver this disjointed, but outwardly insightful look Ayer has combined a typical plot-driven narrative with large elements of a pure character study. The director clearly wants to depict the type of men and personalities it took to win World War II, but further than this it is about how they became these beings free of any kind of moral compass yet trapped in a mindset that left nearly every other human an enemy. When we look at history we see what we are taught in textbooks and reference what we learn in lectures, but the little details escape us, the unimaginable is left at that and the countless lives sacrificed are best forgotten as their bodies are lost in a sea of limbs. Carnage is a disgusting act of man that seems to settle little more than who has more men fighting for them and Fury gets to the heart of this ugly method that sees men, people just like you and I, transformed into these conditioned warriors that see things in nothing but black and white, all or nothing, live or die. It is in these hands governments put as much power as they can muster which naturally translates to the indestructible mentality of soldiers thinking of themselves as an exception while the talkers, the leaders sit back and hope for the best possible outcome. Fury commentates on the ugliness of war by laying waste to the idea those we call heroes couldn't feel less like one.